In fiction , a character or personage , is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel , play , radio or television series , music , film , or video game ). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made. Derived from the Ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ , the English word dates from the Restoration , although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding in 1749. From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor " developed. (Before this development, the term dramatis personae , naturalized in English from Latin and meaning "masks of the drama", encapsulated the notion of characters from the literal aspect of masks .) Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theater or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person". In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase " in character " has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers , has been called characterization .
35-501: Marc Lawrence (born Max Goldsmith ; February 17, 1910 – November 28, 2005) was an American character actor who specialized in underworld types. He has also been credited as F. A. Foss , Marc Laurence and Marc C. Lawrence . Lawrence was born in New York City, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Minerva Norma ( née Sugarman), and a Russian Jewish father, Israel Simon Goldsmith. He participated in plays in school, then attended
70-438: A character using the basic character archetypes which are common to many cultural traditions: the father figure , mother figure, hero , and so on. Some writers make use of archetypes as presented by Carl Jung as the basis for character traits. Generally, when an archetype from some system (such as Jung's) is used, elements of the story also follow the system's expectations in terms of storyline . An author can also create
105-460: A distinction between the individuals represented in tragedy and in comedy arose: tragedy, along with epic poetry , is "a representation of serious people" (1449b9—10), while comedy is "a representation of people who are rather inferior" (1449a32—33). In the Tractatus coislinianus (which may or may not be by Aristotle), Ancient Greek comedy is defined as involving three types of characters:
140-429: A fictional character using generic stock characters , which are generally flat. They tend to be used for supporting or minor characters. However, some authors have used stock characters as the starting point for building richly detailed characters, such as William Shakespeare 's use of the boastful soldier character as the basis for John Falstaff . Some authors create charactonyms for their characters. A charactonym
175-555: A member of the Communist Party . He named Sterling Hayden , Lionel Stander , Anne Revere , Larry Parks , Karen Morley and Jeff Corey as Communists. He departed for Europe, where he continued to make films. Following the demise of the blacklist, he returned to America and resumed his position as a familiar and talented purveyor of gangland types. He played gangsters in two James Bond movies: 1971's Diamonds Are Forever opposite Sean Connery , and 1974's The Man with
210-545: A menacing figure because of his "long, angular face", which was easily recognized in public, although audiences rarely knew his name. Character actors can play a variety of types, such as the femme fatale , gunslinger , sidekick , town drunk , villain , hooker with a heart of gold , and many others. Prolific character actors, such as Margo Martindale , are rarely out of work, and they often have long careers that span decades. They are often highly esteemed by fellow actors. Character (arts) A character who stands as
245-787: A particular part or in a certain genre, such that the actor becomes so strongly identified with a particular type of role that casting directors and theatrical agents steer the actor to similar roles. Some character actors are known as "chameleons", able to play roles that vary wildly, such as Gary Oldman and Christian Bale . Many character actors tend to play the same type of role throughout their careers, like Harvey Keitel as tough, determined characters; Christopher Lloyd as eccentrics; Claude Rains as sophisticated, sometimes morally ambiguous men; Abe Vigoda as aging criminals; Fairuza Balk as moody goth girls; Doug Jones as non-human creatures; and Forest Whitaker as composed characters with underlying volatility. Ed Lauter usually portrayed
280-475: A representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type. Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualized . The characters in Henrik Ibsen 's Hedda Gabler (1891) and August Strindberg 's Miss Julie (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender , such that the conflicts between
315-458: Is a "walk-on", a term used by Seymour Chatman for characters that are not fully delineated and individualized; rather they are part of the background or the setting of the narrative. Dynamic characters are those that change over the course of the story, while static characters remain the same throughout. An example of a popular dynamic character in literature is Ebenezer Scrooge , the protagonist of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. At
350-598: Is a name that implies the psychological makeup of the person, makes an allegorical allusion, or makes reference to their appearance. For example, Shakespeare has an emotional young male character named Mercutio , John Steinbeck has a kind, sweet character named Candy in Of Mice and Men , and Mervyn Peake has a Machiavellian, manipulative, and murderous villain in Gormenghast named Steerpike . The charactonym can also indicate appearance. For example, François Rabelais gave
385-496: Is possible, therefore, to have stories that do not contain "characters" in Aristotle's sense of the word, since character necessarily involves making the ethical dispositions of those performing the action clear. If, in speeches, the speaker "decides or avoids nothing at all", then those speeches "do not have character" (1450b9—11). Aristotle argues for the primacy of plot ( mythos ) over character ( ethos ). He writes: But
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#1732798368081420-427: Is somewhat abstract and open to interpretation. While all actors play "characters", the term character actor is often applied to an actor who frequently plays a distinctive and important supporting role. In another sense, a character actor may also be one who specializes in minor roles. A character actor may play a variety of characters in their career, often referred to as a "chameleon", or may be known for playing
455-871: The Star Trek franchise when he played Mr. Zeemo in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode " Badda-Bing Badda-Bang ", which aired in February 1999. He played the elderly motel owner in From Dusk Till Dawn . His final film role was in Looney Tunes Back in Action (2003), appearing as an Acme Corporation vice president. Lawrence directed Nightmare in the Sun (1965) and Pigs (1973). In 1991 Lawrence's autobiography
490-480: The City College of New York . In 1930, he received a two-year scholarship to the repertory theater operated by Eva Le Gallienne . Lawrence's film debut came in 1933. Lawrence's pock-marked complexion, brooding appearance and New York street-guy accent made him a natural for heavies, and he played scores of gangsters and mob bosses over the next six decades. He had become so familiar in the niche that Lawrence
525-467: The buffoon ( bômolochus ), the ironist ( eirōn ), and the imposter or boaster ( alazṓn ). All three are central to Aristophanes ' Old Comedy . By the time the Roman comic playwright Plautus wrote his plays two centuries later, the use of characters to define dramatic genres was well established. His Amphitryon begins with a prologue in which Mercury claims that since
560-446: The social order . In fiction writing , authors create dynamic characters using various methods. Sometimes characters are conjured up from imagination; in other instances, they are created by amplifying the character trait of a real person into a new fictional creation. An author or creator basing a character on a real person can use a person they know, a historical figure, a current figure whom they have not met, or themselves, with
595-606: The 2014 documentary That Guy Dick Miller ; with a prime example of a "that guy" actor being John Carroll Lynch . Over the course of an acting career, an actor can sometimes shift between leading roles and supporting roles. Some leading actors, as they get older, find that access to leading roles is limited by their age. Sometimes character actors have developed careers based on specific talents needed in genre films, such as dancing, horsemanship, acrobatics, swimming ability, or boxing. Many up-and-coming actors find themselves typecast in character roles due to an early success with
630-576: The Golden Gun opposite Roger Moore . He also portrayed a henchman opposite Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man (1976) and a stereotypical Miami mob boss alongside Jerry Reed and Dom DeLuise in the comedy Hot Stuff (1979). Lawrence played Volnoth, a member of the Gatherers, in the 1989 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode " The Vengeance Factor ". He subsequently returned to
665-477: The age of 93, Lawrence remarried Alicia, a Mexican woman. He lived in Palm Springs, California . After having been hospitalized for over a week after an illness, Lawrence died on November 28, 2005 at his home at the age of 95. Character actor A character actor is an actor known for playing unusual, eccentric or interesting characters in supporting roles , rather than leading ones. The term
700-517: The characters reveal ideological conflicts. The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work. The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic , linguistic , proxemic ) that it forms with the other characters. The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination , and
735-453: The characters, but they include the characters for the sake of their actions" (1450a15-23). Aristotle suggests that works were distinguished in the first instance according to the nature of the person who created them: "the grander people represented fine actions, i.e. those of fine persons" by producing "hymns and praise-poems", while "ordinary people represented those of inferior ones" by "composing invectives" (1448b20—1449a5). On this basis,
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#1732798368081770-586: The earliest surviving work of dramatic theory , Poetics ( c. 335 BCE ), the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle states that character ( ethos ) is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of the three objects that it represents (1450a12). He understands character not to denote a fictional person, but the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5). He defines character as "that which reveals decision , of whatever sort" (1450b8). It
805-546: The latter being either an author-surrogate or an example of self-insertion . The use of a famous person easily identifiable with certain character traits as the base for a principal character is a feature of allegorical works, such as Animal Farm by George Orwell, which portrays Soviet revolutionaries as pigs. Other authors, especially for historical fiction , make use of real people and create fictional stories revolving around their lives, as with The Paris Wife which revolves around Ernest Hemingway . An author can create
840-406: The most important of these is the structure of the incidents. For (i) tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and unhappiness lie in action, and the end [of life] is a sort of action, not a quality; people are of a certain sort according to their characters, but happy or the opposite according to their actions. So [the actors] do not act in order to represent
875-642: The name Gargantua to a giant and the huge whale in Pinocchio (1940) is named Monstro . In his book Aspects of the Novel , E. M. Forster defined two basic types of characters, their qualities, functions, and importance for the development of the novel: flat characters and round characters. Flat characters are two-dimensional, in that they are relatively uncomplicated. By contrast, round characters are complex figures with many different characteristics, that undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise
910-406: The narrative structure, unlike core characters, for which any significant conflict must be traced during a considerable time, which is often seen as an unjustified waste of resources. There may also be a continuing or recurring guest character. Sometimes a guest or minor character may gain unanticipated popularity and turn into a regular or main one; this is known as a breakout character . In
945-459: The play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a tragicomedy . [...] is first used in English to denote 'a personality in a novel or a play' in 1749 ( The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , s.v.). Its use as 'the sum of the qualities which constitute an individual' is a mC17 development. The modern literary and theatrical sense of 'an individual created in a fictitious work'
980-481: The reader. In psychological terms, round or complex characters may be considered to have five personality dimensions under the Big Five model of personality. The five factors are: Stock characters are usually one-dimensional and thin. Mary Sues are characters that usually appear in fan fiction which are virtually devoid of flaws, and are therefore considered flat characters. Another type of flat character
1015-415: The same actor. In contrast to leading actors , they are generally seen as less glamorous. While a leading actor often has the physical attractiveness considered necessary to play the love interest , a character actor typically does not. In fact, some character actors are known for their unusual looks. For example, Chicago character actor William Schutz's face was disfigured in a car accident when he
1050-479: The same type of roles. Character actor roles are more substantial than bit parts or non-speaking extras . The term is used primarily to describe television and film actors, as opposed to theater actors. An early use of the term was in the 1883 edition of The Stage , which defined a character actor as "one who portrays individualities and eccentricities". Actors with a long career history of playing character roles may be difficult for audiences to recognize as being
1085-400: The series' run. Recurring characters often play major roles in more than one episode, sometimes being the main focus. A guest or minor character is one who acts only in a few episodes or scenes. Unlike regular characters, the guest ones do not need to be carefully incorporated into the storyline with all its ramifications: they create a piece of drama and then disappear without consequences to
Marc Lawrence - Misplaced Pages Continue
1120-450: The start of the story, he is a bitter miser, but by the end of the tale, he transforms into a kindhearted, generous man. In television, a regular, main or ongoing character is a character who appears in all or a majority of episodes, or in a significant chain of episodes of the series. Regular characters may be both core and secondary ones. A recurring character or supporting character often and frequently appears from time to time during
1155-508: Was five years old, but his appearance after reconstructive surgery helped him to be distinctive to theater audiences. Generally, the names of character actors are not featured prominently in movie and television advertising on the marquee , since a character actor's name is not expected to attract film audiences. Some character actors have been described as instantly recognizable despite their names being little known. They are colloquially referred to as "that guy", or "that guy" actors, as in
1190-496: Was once informed by studio executive Harry Cohn that infamous mobster Johnny Roselli called Lawrence "the best hood in films." Lawrence himself concurred that many Italian hoods told him he played them better than anyone else. Later, Lawrence found himself under scrutiny for his political leanings. When called before the House Un-American Activities Committee , he admitted he had once been
1225-488: Was published entitled Long Time No See: Confessions of a Hollywood Gangster ( ISBN 0-9636700-0-X ). Lawrence was also the subject of a novel, The Beautiful and the Profane ( ISBN 978-1-4107-0292-0 ) (published in 2002). In 1942, he married Fanya Foss, a Ukrainian-American screenwriter and had 2 children. She died in 1995. His daughter Toni was married to Billy Bob Thornton from 1986 to 1988. In 2003, at
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