extras, stuntpersons, and even animal performers.
Actors who play major roles(also called main,
featured, or lead roles) become principal agents in
helping to move the plot forward. Whether stars
or newcomers, they appear in many scenes and—
ordinarily, but not always—receive screen credit
preceding the title.
In the Hollywood studio system, major roles
were traditionally played by stars such as John
Wayne, whose studios counted on them to draw
audiences regardless of the parts they played.
Their steadfastness was often more important
than their versatility as actors, although Wayne
surprises us more often than we may admit. One of
the strengths of the studio system was its groom-
ing of professionals in all its creative departments,
including actors at all levels, from leads such as
Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn to character
actors such as Thelma Ritter and Andy Devine—
best remembered as, respectively, the wisecracking
commentator on “Jeff ’s” (James Stewart) actions
in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window(1954) and the
Ringo Kid’s (John Wayne) loyal friend in John Ford’s
Stagecoach(1939). Indeed, one of the joys of looking
at movies from this period comes from those char-
acter actors whose faces, if not names, we always
recognize: Mary Boland, Walter Brennan, Harry
Carey, Jr., Ray Collins, Laura Hope Crews, Gladys
George, Marjorie Main, Butterfly McQueen, Una
O’Connor, Franklin Pangborn, Erskine Sanford,
and Ernest Thesiger, to name a distinctive few out
of hundreds.
Stars may be so valuable to productions that
they have stand-ins, actors who look reasonably
like them in height, weight, coloring, and so on and
who substitute for them during the tedious process
of preparing setups or taking light readings.
Because actors in major roles are ordinarily not
hired for their physical or athletic prowess, stunt-
personsdouble for them in scenes requiring special
skills or involving hazardous actions, such as crash-
ing cars, jumping from high places, swimming,
and riding (or falling off ) horses. Through special
effects, however, filmmakers may now augment
actors’ physical exertions so that they appear to do
their own stunts, as in Andy and Larry Wachowski’s
The Matrix(1999) and McG’s Charlie’s Angels(2000).
In effect, the computer becomes the stunt double.
Nonetheless, ten stunt boxers were cast for Clint
Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby(2004), indicating, at
least, that some activities cannot be faked on the
screen, particularly activities that could cause dam-
age to an actor’s looks or other serious injuries.
Actors who play minor roles(or supporting roles)
rank second in the hierarchy. They also help move
the plot forward (and thus may be as important as
actors in major roles), but they generally do not
appear in as many scenes as the featured players.
They may hold character roles, which represent
distinctive character types (sometimes stereo-
types): society leaders, judges, doctors, diplomats,
and so on. Bit playershold small speaking parts,
and extrasusually appear in nonspeaking or crowd
roles and receive no screen credit. Cameos are
small but significant roles often taken by famous
actors, as in Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire TheThe importance of minor roles In John Huston’s The
Maltese Falcon(1941), Humphrey Bogart stars as the hard-
boiled private eye Sam Spade. Gladys George has a small
part as Iva Archer, Spade’s former lover and the widow of his
business partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). In this scene,
George delivers a strongly emotional performance, against
which Bogart displays a relative lack of feeling that fills us in
on relations between the characters. Stars’ performances
often depend on the solid and even exceptional work of their
fellow actors. The unusually fine supporting cast in this
movie includes Hollywood greats Mary Astor, Peter Lorre,
and Sydney Greenstreet, who received an Oscar nomination
for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.ASPECTS OF PERFORMANCE 315