Most American audiences know Chiwetel from his small part in Love Actually; he played the groom to Keira Knightley's blinding ultra-white toothy smile. Americans who don't know him from that probably know him from playing the antagonist in Serenity, where he almost single-handedly managed to outshine Nathan Fillion and crew. He played the lead in last year's Sundance hit Kinky Boots, where he literally walked away with the entire film. If you haven't seen Kinky Boots, I can't recommend it enough, last year I found myself liking it despite the predictable storyline and the hit-you-over-the-head message. This guy has so much charisma that he should be marketing and selling what's left over.

Although classically trained as a Shakespearean actor in the UK, his first film role was in Spielberg's 1997 Amistad. Since then he's also been seen in Dirty Pretty Things, She Hate Me, Four Brothers and Melinda and Melinda. He had four major film roles in 2005, and so far this year he's been in both Inside Man and Children of Men, which isn't too shabby. He has four big projects lined up in 2007, including two that pair him with Don Cheadle, and he can be seen in HBO's Tsunami: The Aftermath on Sunday, December 10.

Chiwetel ("Chewie," to his friends and Han Solo) is one of those actors who can be difficult to describe. He really has a commanding screen presence, but he doesn't have the forced "I'm the star!" quality of someone like Russell Crowe. He's more quiet and imposing without chewing up the scenery. He's played both a a cross-dressing drag queen (is that redundant? Like, a drag queen who dresses like a man? I think I just confused myself) and an interstellar bounty hunter in equally convincing and different manners. It's hard to be the Scene Stealer when you're not someone who tries to completely fill the screen with your presence, like Alan Rickman and Parker Posey do pretty well, but Chiwetel (I know that sounds like I'm on a first-name basis with the guy, but it sounded better than typing Ejiofor over and over) pulls it off in every role he's been in so far. Here's hoping he'll keep his streak running.

Besides, when's the last time we've been rooting for someone named Chewie that wasn't covered in fur?

It may not be fair to label someone a scene stealer when they've got the lead role in a film, but when they're up against The Ramones and manage to hold their own, they've earned it. P.J. Soles, playing high-school groupie/wanna-be songwriter Riff Randell in Rock 'n' Roll High School, is one of the reasons why people still remember and cherish this goofy Roger Corman-produced movie today. (Other reasons include The Ramones and Mary Woronov.) Soles manages to be perky without acting at all stupid, and her high level of energy helps keep the movie interesting. The above photo is from a memorable scene in an all-girls gym class where the scantily clad young women shake it to the movie's title song.

Rock 'n' Roll High School is one of Soles' few star turns -- she mostly appeared in supporting roles, usually as a "screamer" in horror films or as a bubbly girlfriend. One of her first memorable films was the 1976 movie Carrie, where she played one of the mean teen girls -- the one in the red baseball cap, which became a trademark look for her. Many people remember her as the chick whose every other word was "totally" in Halloween. She also has a small role as a sorority girl in the 1980 film Breaking Away. (I didn't realize until writing this article that Soles was married at that time to Dennis Quaid, who had a lead role in the film.) She was one of Goldie Hawn's fellow recruits in Private Benjamin, and then played Bill Murray's love interest in Stripes.

There's not a single frame in James Cameron's Aliens that I don't love. (OK, there's ONE scene from the director's cut that really irks me (it has to do with hamsters), but why nitpick?) I love the music, the sound effects, the script, the brilliant (practical!) effects, the pace, the tone, the mood ... Hell, I could probably watch this movie four times a year and never get sick of the thing. (And get this: I think the original Alien is even better!)

Fresh off of The Terminator, James Cameron employed a powerful new weapon for his first big-budget* flick, and that weapon was The Ensemble. After only a few short scenes you could identify the players: By-the-book Lt. Gorman, oily company man Carter Burke, quietly creepy "synthetic" Bishop, tough-as-nails Vasquez, cigar-chompin' Sgt. Apone, and the quietly noble Corporal Hicks. Toss this crew behind Sigourney Weaver's Ripley and a little girl called Newt, and you've got yourself one helluva platoon. Having read the Alan Dean Foster Aliens novelization, I even know the difference between Ferro, Dietrich, Crowe, Spunkmeyer and Wierzbowski! (* Produced in 1985, Aliens cost less than $20 million to create. Think about that.)

Ah yes, I did forget someone. Good ol' Private Hudson. He starts out as your typical alpha male, a swaggering braggart with more guts than brains ... but when the mayhem gets underway, Bill Paxton's Pvt. Hudson becomes a stand-in for you, the viewer. He whines and blusters and cries and complains as the endless waves of aliens come storming in; he basically does what you or I would do in the exact same situation: Misery, denial, plain old panic. But Paxton, a damn solid actor even twenty years ago, knew how dangerously close this character came to being plain old obnoxious, so he brings an eye-rolling, quick-tempered bravado to the role -- and almost manages to steal the whole damn movie.

Actor Charles Napier's grin is nearly as scary as the late James Coburn's was. In fact, Napier's characters genuinely frighten me at times. I am thinking particularly of his role as psychotic bad guy Harry Sledge in the 1975 Russ Meyer movie Supervixens. For once, one of the men in a Russ Meyer film actually steals scenes away from the overly endowed, bare-breasted women. You thought Willem Dafoe was scary in Wild at Heart? He's a pale imitation of Harry Sledge. Napier flashes that grin and you just know something horrible will happen. I don't understand why the other characters in Supervixens trust him even for one minute.

Napier was in four Meyer films: Cherry, Harry & Raquel (in which he displays full frontal nudity, I'm told), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Seven Minutes, and the aforementioned Supervixens. But you've surely seen Napier even if you're not a fan of Meyer's movies. He's played cops, judges and terrifying bad guys on a number of TV shows -- he even had one-episode roles both on the original Star Trek series and Deep Space Nine. Or perhaps you saw him as Marshall Murdock in Rambo: First Blood Part II. Napier's also had small roles in nearly all Jonathan Demme's films: A doomed guard in Silence of the Lambs, the judge in Philadelphia, and a hairdresser in Married to the Mob. And let's not forget he's the leader of the real Good Ole Boys band in The Blues Brothers. He's got a square jaw that rivals Bruce Campbell's.

It doesn't matter how old Charles Napier is or how harmless his character is supposed to be. When he grins in that lazy, slow-yet-homicidal way, all eyes turn his way and the scene is his. And a chill runs down your spine, while at the same time you feel slightly titillated. Did I say that last bit out loud? Well, watch him and judge for yourself.

Everyone is familiar with Carol Kane. But from where or from what do they remember her best? The actress has stolen scenes in so many films that you could have a room of twenty people and each person might choose a different title she's most memorable in. She's played so many types -- quiet and loud; cute and sexy and plain and creepy; young and very, very old -- it is amazing that she can sustain such easy recognition. Perhaps it is her tired, Bette Davis eyes. In a non-physical way, it is her distinct voice, of course, which people recall.

She held her own in early, small parts opposite Al Pacino, Woody Allen and Jack Nicholson before landing one of her few leading roles in the original When a Stranger Calls, where her ageless face allowed her to play her character as a teenager and an adult. She spent a season on the TV-show Taxi, though her presence was so huge it feels like she appeared throughout its five years. In My Blue Heaven, she had little to do, but she still left a mark with her swooning reception of one of the greatest pick up lines ever. She beat up Bill Murray with a toaster in Scrooged, called Billy Crystal a LIAR!!!! in The Princess Bride and most recently went AWOL on Vin Diesel in The Pacifier, leaving him alone to care for the film's children and deliver its comedy (he succeeds only in the former).

One film, a guilty pleasure of mine, for which Kane is not usually remembered, is License to Drive. Personally I think of her most fondly in that film, playing Corey Haim's pregnant mother. In fact, take out all those scenes with Corey and Corey, and you've got a great little maternity short starring her and Richard Masur. The role has a beautiful build-up, and it displays nearly all of Kane's traits and trademarks, allowing her to start out simple and finish with a tremendous bang.

Charactor actor Charles Durning has stolen scenes in countless movies since the early 1970s (not to mention various TV shows and Broadway plays). Many of us grew up watching him as Doc Hopper, the evil fried-frog-legs magnate in The Muppet Movie. I always envision him in Hopper's stereotypically Southern white suit. I've pictured him wearing that suit even in movies where, after I did a little research, it turns out he didn't wear it at all, such as The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (where he played the governor of Texas) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (where he played the governor of Mississippi). The man was born to wear seersucker and string ties.

Durning can steal a movie away from Muppets, for heaven's sake. He can even steal scenes from Robert Downey Jr. in Home for the Holidays, and Downey is arguably one of the top scene-stealers of the past 20 years. One reason is that Durning can sing and dance -- he danced professionally in his younger days. Suddenly, in the middle of a movie like Home for the Holidays, he'll start waltzing around the room with surprising grace. Or he'll just start singing, as in Tootsie or The Hudsucker Proxy, and all attention turns to him.

With his three scenes as the "dickless" EPA agent in Ghostbusters, William Atherton imprinted himself into the consciousness of moviegoers as one of the all-time greatest scumbags of modern cinema. The role typecast him for the rest of the '80s, despite a prior decade full of varied, significant parts in films including The Day of the Locust, The Sugarland Express and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, as he was cast as a sleazy science professor in Real Genius and a sleazy television reporter in Die Hard (reprised in Die Hard 2). Now he's best remembered for these three scene-stealing assholes.

Of these three characters, Jerry Hathaway from Real Genius is the one that might be considered too large a role to really be scene-stealing, but the film's protagonist, played by Gabe Jarret, is so dull that its biggest supporting actors, Val Kilmer, who chews so much scenery that it is easy to forget he isn't the lead, and Atherton, become very memorable parts in a movie that would otherwise be forgotten. A million actors could have played Hathaway as written, but it is Atherton's prominent face and voice combined with his unique manner of speech that make the character really stand out.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Thelma Ritter was a genius of sorts. Nondescript in appearance, middle-aged, sporting a constantly-irritated expression and the kind of Brooklyn accent actors are no longer allowed to have, she spent her entire career stealing both scenes and entire films -- Rear Window, Pillow Talk, The Misfits, The Mating Season, etc. etc. etc. -- from glamorous, big-name stars. She stole them, however, not through hamminess or attention-getting ticks. Instead, she was simply so real, and so convincing that it was impossible to meet her on screen, and then forget her. Once spotted, we instantly want to know everything about her character: Where is she from? Does she live alone? Why is she so pissed off? Or, alternately, why does she pretend to be so pissed-off when we know her heart is broken?

Ritter was nominated for six best supporting actress awards, including nominations four years in a row between 1950 (All About Eve) and 1953 (Pickup on South Street). The fact that she never won is somehow fitting for an actress whose career was built on of unappreciated characters, but if you watch Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street, you'll realize that it's also a crime. In the film, Ritter plays a small-time crook named Moe. She looks and acts like she's about 400-years-old, worn down by the street, and the daily tedium of survival. One of her friends, Skip (played by an unusually subdued Richard Widmark), has gotten them both into big trouble, and the two grab a safe moment together in an all-night diner. The scene is a wonder to behold, and Ritter is glorious. Every day of Moe's life is etched on her face, and the resignation in her voice somehow lets us see every single day of her grinding, hard-scrabble life. There's no weeping or gnashing of teeth here, simply an adult letting her guard down for a second, in quiet a moment of shared regret. Ritter lost that year to Donna Reed in From Here to Eternity; I like to think that, knowing the truth, she just laughed.

I haven't ever been able to actually prove it, but I swear I remember hearing, many moons ago, that the Tim Matheson role in Animal House was originally written with Chevy Chase in mind. Now, considering how slick, smooth, and smarmy "Otter" is throughout the flick, I don't find that very hard to believe. And while I'd love to see how Chevy Chase would have fit into the Animal House ensemble, I don't know how much I'd love a version of Animal House that doesn't feature Tim Matheson.

One of the undeniable classics of modern Hollywood comedy, Animal House packs a lot of familiar faces and memorable characters into the mix. Peter Riegert's "Boon" is a silver-tongued nice-guy; James Widdoes' "Hoover" strikes a great balance between maturity and childishness; Stephen Furst's "Flounder" is a lovably chubby dork; Tom Hulce's "Pinto" makes for a solid 'reference point' for an audience member ... I could go on an on: John Vernon's hilariously evil dean, Mark Metcalf's absurdly obnoxious jerk, Bruce McGill's profanely inscrutible troublemaker, and (of course) John Belushi's maniacally entertaining party animal. (And that's not even including names like Karen Allen, Donald Sutherland, Verna Bloom, and young Kevin Bacon!)

The 1984 film Silent Night, Deadly Night is a typical Eighties horror movie, considered controversial upon release because the killer dressed up as Santa Claus. The first 10 minutes of the film are truly the best part, and this is due almost entirely to character actor Will Hare, today's featured scene stealer.

It's Christmas Eve, and little Billy is accompanying his parents to visit Grandpa (Hare), who is in a nursing home and never speaks or seems to move. Grandpa is so harmless that the parents leave Billy alone in the room with him while they discuss matters with the doctor. Suddenly Grandpa springs to life. He warns the boy that Santa Claus doesn't just bring presents to good children -- he punishes the naughty ones. "You see Santa Claus tonight, you better run for your life, boy!" Little Billy is terrified ... and by the time the parents return, Grandpa has reverted to his catatonic state.

Our original plan was to mount a weekly series in which we'd applaud a different character actor with each new column. But it seems that this was SUCH a good idea that someone else beat us to the punch ... by about six years. So the Cine-Squad decided to take our "J.T. Walsh Award" and morph it into a feature called "Scene Stealers," which will celebrate great actors and actresses who have A) stolen entire movies with their awesomeness, B) popped up in a particularly juicy cameo or supporting role, or C) salvaged a failed movie simply by being a member of the cast.

For our inaugural Scene Stealers feature, I chose to celebrate Mr. Gene Hackman, mainly because he's my very favorite actor, but also because ... well, have you guys ever actually seen Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead?

As Cinematicess Martha Fischer and I were spitballing ideas on how to create a regular feature that would spread some love to all those wonderful character actors out there, my first impulse was to call it "The Walken Award." But Martha, being quite appreciably smarter than I, said "Scott, if you're trying to create a column about underrated or unacknowledged character actors ... Walken's not your flagship guy. Everyone already LOVES Christopher Walken!" And she was right. So I flipped through my Favorite Actors file and tried a few new names on for size. "The Dabney Coleman Award? Nah, too grouchy. The Harry Dean Stanton Award? The M. Emmet Walsh ... Maybe just a bit too obscure... Oh jeez, I got it: J.T. freakin' Walsh!" It was perfect, mainly because Walsh was such a fantastic character actor, but also because he's now sadly demised -- and therefore it felt kinda "right" to name an award after him.

Unfortunately, a bunch of smart movie geeks had beaten me to the punch ... by a few years, at least.

After publishing our piece "The J.T. Walsh Awards: An Introduction," I got an email from a reader informing me that a very popular website called Fametracker has long been running a feature column called "The J.T. Walsh Memorial: Hey! It's That Guy!" -- which means that A) they got there first so the name obviously belongs to Fametracker, and B) brilliant minds really do think alike. Rest assured that this was not an attempt to shanghai or piggy-back another website's concept -- apparently the 'net's just full of people who really dig character actors -- especially J.T. Walsh.

So we ask you, the Cinematical reader, to help us come up with a new name for this award. I'm still partial to "The Walken Award," but I'm even more partial to getting some help from our loyal readers. So think hard about those wonderfully familiar faces that seem to pop up in every single movie, and then leave your suggestions in the comments bin.

Ever since I was a kid, I was drawn to the "sidekick" characters; the henchmen, the assistants, the murder suspects and the school teachers. Movie stars are great and all that jazz, but the heart and soul of an ensemble often lies within the supporting cast: the horny best friend, the abusive boss, the comic relief, etc. ... Over the years I've made a habit out of putting all those faces to all those names, and I often find myself telling friends, "Oh, you know this actor. Not by his name, maybe, but trust me -- you've seen this guy." And there are hundreds of 'em to pick through: professional character constructors who toil just outside the spotlights afforded to your Jamie Foxxes and your Russell Crowes.

C'mon, who would you rather sit down and have dinner with: Tom Cruise or ... William H. Macy? I rest my case.

So since the recognition and appreciation of modern-day character actors is something the hardcore movie nuts enjoy, we thought it might be fun to throw some love at a few different performers each week. (And yes, the phrase "character actor" includes women too!) We'll call this column "The J.T. Walsh Award," simply because J.T. Walsh was one of the very coolest character players ever to hold a SAG card, and (despite never earning one measly Oscar nomination) we think J.T. Walsh deserves to have an award named after him.