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When we at Fametracker learned that diminutive character actor Ron Rifkin would be a regular cast member on the new and highly anticipated ABC series Alias, we were pleased. We've enjoyed his prolific work over the years, and we were happy he'd be drawing a regular paycheque for at least thirteen weeks or so. But, we thought, how will the likeable, miniscule performer convince us that he could be a cold-blooded CIA type? He's so little and friendly! And he always plays nice guys!

In researching this very article -- meant to celebrate the career of Ron Rifkin -- this commentator was made to wonder how it ever came to pass that I started to like him. Every time I've seen him on-screen, he's been playing a complete bastard. Well, that's not quite the case. Generally he plays an outwardly kindly, genial, wee little fellow who eventually turns out to be a complete bastard. Rifkin's unassuming stature and twinkly eyes camouflage his truly nefarious purposes as a crooked D.A. (in L.A. Confidential). As Benton's mentor Dr. Carl Vucelich on ER, he starts out as a caring doctor -- a cancer researcher, no less -- but he falsifies his research findings and, when discovered and confronted, bitterly threatens to destroy Benton's career. In Keeping the Faith, it's hard to tell, at first, that the synagogue board president Rifkin plays is a dick, because he looks like such a gentle sort; it's not until he starts lecturing Ben Stiller's Rabbi Jake about guided meditation sessions that you realize how intolerant and pissy he is. When Rifkin turns up as Giovanni Ribisi's father in Boiler Room, it's easy to be on his side, because Ribisi's Seth is such a droopy, whiny...uh, criminal, but the movie would have us believe that Seth became the sad sack we see on the screen because he was denied his father's love as a child. (I didn't quite buy it, but whatever -- Rifkin = The Devil, again.) In The Negotiator, a tale of police corruption, we're not entirely sure until the very end who is the culprit; Rifkin pretty much fades into the wallpaper amid such certified HITG!s as David Morse, John Spencer, Paul Giamatti, and no less a personage than the esteemed and revered J.T. Walsh himself, so that when he re-emerges and reveals himself as the bad guy, the audience is left to marvel, "That little guy is in this movie? Oh, right. What a bastard!"

Even Rifkin's most sympathetic role (among those I've seen, anyway) -- as the stubborn, single-minded book publisher Isaac Geldhart in The Substance of Fire -- is tinged with bastardry. We meet Isaac as his tiny publishing boutique is challenged with financial problems. Instead of taking the advice of those more economically- and less artistically-minded than himself, he impetuously throws all of the company's resources into publishing a multi-volume tome about the history of cruelty, at a retail cost of hundreds of dollars per copy. Naturally, this sinks his business, and he starts to lose his mind. At the fringes of his life, we meet his three adult children, all of whom find it hard to relate to Isaac since his wife's death, and have all suffered for his chilliness and impatience. Even then -- even when he is the central, genuinely tragic figure of the film -- Rifkin is kind of a prick.

Does Ron Rifkin exude some kind of ineffable goodness that has hypnotized me into thinking he's a good man even as the actor plays assholes all the livelong day? Or do I just have a soft spot for short, twinkly-eyed Jews? We may never know.