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With some actors, the tea leaves of their career path are difficult to read. For example, one year Judd Nelson was messing with the bulls and getting the horns as America's favourite malcontent in The Breakfast Club, and the next, er, decade he was getting bounced from Suddenly Susan because he wasn't up to the rigors of trading quips with Brooke Shields. Where did it all go wrong? Well, it's hard to say.

With David Keith, however, it's not hard to say.

Not that things have gone horribly wrong for David Keith, who is, by all indications, making a nice living for himself playing steely-eyed Southerners, usually enlisted in the military. In fact, there's a good chance that you've enjoyed his work in just these kind of roles, in such movies as Men of Honor, U-571 and, most recently, Behind Enemy Lines.

But if you remember David Keith from his An Officer and a Gentleman and Lords of Discipline roles back in the dawning years of the 1980s, then you'll remember that there was a time when his steely Southern charms and chiseled good looks had positioned him as a promising, up-and-coming leading man -- someone who, had the fates smiled upon him, might have gone on to play a rough-hewn dance teacher in Dirty Dancing, that runaway sleeper hit. And who would have then parlayed that notoriety into the role of a murdered husband in Ghost, who haunts his former wife in a dubiously romantic attempt to convince her not to get on with her life, but rather to pine for her dead husband forever in perpetual misery.

But David Keith did not star in those movies. instead, he went on to star in Off and Running, Caged Fear, and Whose Child is This? The War for Baby Jessica. For which we can hardly blame him, since his veritable doppelganger, Patrick Swayze, had by that time effectively elbowed him out of the spotlight. And if there is one thing we know to be true, it is this: America will clutch one steely-eyed Southerner to its collective bosom, but not two, especially when they look like twin brothers.

So that was the first thing that happened to David Keith.

The other thing that happened was Keith David.

Keith David, as you Hey, It's That Guy! fans will know, is the burly black character actor who appeared as Imam in Pitch Black and as Cameron Diaz's stepfather in There's Something About Mary. Now, if you saw David Keith and Keith David standing side by side, you would not be likely to confuse one for the other. And we're not saying that having another actor in Hollywood with the flippity-flop version of your name is absolutely guaranteed to sink your battleship. But when you're juggling both a veritable doppelganger and another character actor with the flippity-flop version of your name...well, that's a lot of sandbags strung to the hot air balloon of your career.

- MFF