In Praise of "That-Guy"

The faces on the movie posters are not the faces we see queueing at Lidl with a six-pack of toilet paper and a multibag of Hula Hoops. They aren't the faces we see waiting at the bus-stop or fishing their car keys out of a drain with a coat-hanger while their ice-cream melts in the boot. By-and-large- they aren't the faces we see when we look in the mirror.

We don't see Tom Cruise or Will Smith, we see Vincent Schiavelli, Clint Howard and Gilbert Gottfried. We see "That Guy!" You know, "That guy from the thing with the dog!"

Real people have faces that look as though they were carved out of wax by a cataractic mental-patient with a palette-knife and then left out in the Sun. They are as pock-marked as Edward James Olmos, as chinless as Toby Jones and as generally all-round grotesque as Luis Guzman.

Beautiful faces are boring - I want faces with a story, I want the resigned sadness of Harry Dean Stanton and its tale of missed chances, regret and hopeless resignation. I want the yellowed paper of Philip Baker Hall, Richard Jenkins, Jeffrey Jones and Danny Trejo. Not the clean page of that cunt from Avatar.

Anyways, here's a painting of Brendan Gleeson I did for some reason. He's been in everything, including your Mum.

(And please, don't forget the wide variety of "Her-From-That-Thing" actors including: Catherine O'Hara, Linda Hunt and Carol Kane.)