Edmund O'Brien

The slightly pudgy Edmund O’Brien was a highly respected character actor from the mid-‘40s through late ‘60s, He earned my affection for his everyman looks and personality, the pugnacious swagger when he walked, and the way his hair flopped perfectly when he moved his head, and above all, for his often bombastic but always enjoyable acting. Plus, I liked the characters he played – mostly ordinary Joes just trying to survive – a P.R. man in both THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (for which he won an Oscar in 1954 and A DOUBLE LIFE, an insurance salesman mistakenly poisoned desperately trying to find his own murderer in D.O.A., an earnest undercover cop in WHITE HEAT with James Cagney, a husband on a fishing trip with a buddy who picks up the wrong man in THE HITCH-HIKER, a bourbon-loving senator in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY and a whiskey-swilling newspaper publisher in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERY VALENCE, even Casca to Marlon Brando’s Antony in a big Hollywood version of Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR (Cassius had "a lean and hungry look," but no one could accuse O'Brien's Casca of that!).