Michael Gambon vs. Brian Cox
Battle of the Hardest-Working Crusty British Character Actors in Show Business

There are two kinds of scary talented British actors. There's the kind who are so committed to the nobility of their craft that they never venture far from West End stages, except to twinkle in a Merchant Ivory production, so that no one knows who they are until they die and their obituaries turn up on some wire service or other. Then there are the ones who have enough savvy (or maybe just enough ambition to own a Bentley) to ply their formidable skills in products at all heights of brow -- and the ability to fake an American accent convincingly helps immensely in this endeavour.

When a renowned British actor takes a role in, say, a broad farce set among a group of state troopers, or in a broad farce built around a clueless white rapper character, there are surely those among their peers who would tar them as sellouts. (Or some British slang term that means the same thing but sounds plummier -- you know, like "lorry" or "brolly" or "pram." Maybe in Britain, sellouts are called...er...whizzlefloofs.) We at Fametracker, however -- anxious as we ourselves are to sell out to any media conglomerate or plain old crazy billionaire who'll have us -- are more inclined to praise the canny business sense of Brian Cox and Michael Gambon, two of the busiest character actors working today, than to damn them for appearing in the occasional bit of populist piffle. Plus, it's a lot easier to forgive paycheque roles when those paycheques end up in the pockets of really excellent, chameleonic actors who generally improve the quality of every movie they do. (And by that measure, Longitude -- which features both Gambon and Cox -- must be the greatest historical mini-series A&E ever produced.)

If Gambon's and Cox's names are not familiar to you, fear not; neither would be out of place as a H!ITG! profilee, and you have probably seen each of them on screen at least once. In Cox's case, you've possibly seen him on screen several times in the last year alone, since he's co-starred in The 25th Hour, Adaptation, The Ring, The Bourne Identity, and The Rookie, among others. If you were disgusted by Red Dragon and wanted to see how the same story turned out when an actual director was in charge, and rented Manhunter, there he was as Hannibal the Cannibal. Fan of costume dramas set in Scotland and released in the mid-'90s? Cox is in both Braveheart and Rob Roy. Owen Wilson partisan? Cox co-starred with him in The Minus Man and performed his screenplay in Rushmore. Later this year, he will join the cast of an established sci-fi franchise when he plays General William Stryker in X-Men 2. Not a film fan? He also has a recurring role as Daphne's dad on Frasier.

Michael Gambon is every bit as prolific as Brian Cox. (In fact, as of this writing, each of them has the same number of credits on his IMDb entry: 75.) Though Gambon is a few years crustier than Cox, the two actors are still soul twins -- professionally speaking, anyway. Cox played a real-life character in the made-for-TV movie Nuremberg; Gambon did the same in the made-for-TV movie Path to War. Cox played a creepy villain in L.I.E.; Gambon played a creepy villain in The Insider. Cox co-starred in the slice-of-Irish-life drama The Boxer; Gambon co-starred in the slice-of-Irish-life drama Dancing at Lughnasa. And where Cox has his part in the hugely popular sci-fi franchise X-Men, Gambon has recently joined the cast of the fantasy franchise Harry Potter, taking over the role of Dumbledore from the late Richard Harris. However, where Cox excels at playing contemporary American curmudgeons -- he'd have made a much less smug Warren Schmidt, for instance -- Gambon's more often crabbing it up in British period dramas like Charlotte Gray, The Wings of the Dove, Gosford Park, and Mary Reilly (and dramas set so far in the American past that the characters might as well be British, like Sleepy Hollow). His desiccated gravity makes him convincing playing ogre-ish fathers, pompous butlers, and aging bachelors alike.

While Gambon has, like fellow thespianic giants Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, and Ian McKellen, been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and Cox may earn the same honour someday, neither Cox nor Gambon will probably ever be as famous or Oscar-nominated as the likes of Hopkins, Caine, or McKellen. Why? Well, Cox and Gambon are crusty. Like the late Jason Robards, they both seem like they've always been old and a bit haggard; they never had the angelic good looks of, say, a young Peter O'Toole circa Lawrence of Arabia. So that's part of it -- the lumpen crustiness. But because we think they're neat, we will venture another guess as to why neither Gambon nor Cox has had an especially Hopkinesque career arc: because a nice, meaty character role is more fun to play than a silky if constipated CIA operative in a movie like Bad Company.

Like all the very best H!ITG!s, Cox and Gambon have the ability to obliterate their own personalities -- about which, since neither is exactly a whore on the publicity circuit, we know nothing -- in the service of the role; you don't see the actor, you just see the role. Played really, really well. If crustily.

Advantage: Cox