Rambo

Sylvester Stallone

John Rambo

New York City, New York, USA

Sylvester Stallone is an American actor, writer, director, and producer who became one of the defining action stars of the 1980s and 1990s, creating two of cinema's most recognisable characters: Rocky Balboa and John Rambo. Born Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone on July 6, 1946, in New York City, Stallone struggled for years to establish himself as an actor before writing the screenplay that would completely change his life. That movie was Rocky. Released in 1976, Rocky starred Stallone as Rocky Balboa, a small-time Philadelphia boxer unexpectedly given the opportunity to fight heavyweight champion Apollo Creed. The film became a huge success and earned Stallone Academy Award nominations for both Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Rocky won the Academy Award for Best Picture and developed into one of Hollywood's most enduring film franchises, with Stallone returning as Balboa throughout numerous sequels and later in the Creed series. But Rocky was only the beginning. In 1982, Stallone introduced audiences to another character who would become synonymous with his career when he played troubled Vietnam veteran John Rambo in First Blood. Rambo returned in Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985, helping transform Stallone into one of the biggest action stars of the decade. He continued playing the character across further sequels, eventually returning for Rambo: Last Blood in 2019. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Stallone became a fixture of blockbuster cinema. His films included Cobra, Over the Top, Tango & Cash, Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, The Specialist and Judge Dredd. Not every movie was about machine guns and exploding helicopters, however. Stallone also ventured into comedy with films including Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, while 1997's Cop Land gave him the opportunity to deliver a quieter dramatic performance alongside an impressive ensemble cast. After a period away from the top of the box office, Stallone successfully revived both of his signature characters during the 2000s with Rocky Balboa and Rambo. He then created another action franchise with 2010's The Expendables, assembling a cast packed with action-movie veterans and eventually sharing the screen with stars including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Harrison Ford. Stallone returned to Rocky once again in Creed in 2015. His performance as an ageing Balboa mentoring Apollo Creed's son, Adonis, earned Stallone another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, almost four decades after the original Rocky. Later roles have included appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Guardians of the Galaxy films and the television series Tulsa King. Few actors are more closely associated with the golden age of action cinema than Sylvester Stallone. From running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as Rocky to disappearing into the jungle as Rambo, Stallone helped create some of the most enduring images of 1970s, 80s and 90s popular cinema. And for an actor who was once struggling to convince Hollywood to give him a chance, creating one iconic movie character would have been quite an achievement.

Richard Crenna

Los Angeles, USA

Richard Crenna built a career that couldn't be contained to one medium or one type of role. Born in Los Angeles on November 30, 1926, he began acting on radio as a child, appearing on the Boy Scout Jamboree before playing Walter “Bronco” Thompson on The Great Gildersleeve. He later originated the awkward Walter Denton on Our Miss Brooks and stayed with the comedy when it moved to television in 1952. That transition helped establish a career defined by range. After joining The Real McCoys as Luke McCoy, Crenna also became one of the series’ directors. He went on to direct episodes of The Andy Griffith Show while continuing to work in front of the camera. His performance as California state senator James Slattery in Slattery’s People brought two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nomination in 1965. On film, Crenna could suggest authority without making it feel simple. He played an American gunboat captain opposite Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles, co-starred with Audrey Hepburn in the thriller Wait Until Dark and appeared in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Un Flic. Westerns remained part of his 1970s work, while the miniseries Centennial gave him the darker role of Colonel Frank Skimmerhorn. Later audiences saw him as Kathleen Turner’s doomed husband in Body Heat and as Colonel Sam Trautman, John Rambo’s former commanding officer, in the first three Rambo films. Trautman became Crenna’s best-known role, built around a steady, commanding presence that suited the scale of the series. He was also willing to turn that image inside out, spoofing the character in Hot Shots! Television remained equally important. Crenna won an Emmy for the title role in the 1985 television film The Rape of Richard Beck and starred as detective Frank Janek across seven made-for-television films. In 2001, he portrayed Ronald Reagan in The Day Reagan Was Shot. Across radio, television and film, as both performer and director, Crenna’s career showed an unusual ability to keep changing shape without losing its centre.

Brian Dennehy

Bridgeport

Brian Dennehy (1938–2020) was the kind of actor who could make authority feel reassuring, dangerous or both at once. His breakthrough film role, as the overzealous Sheriff Will Teasle opposite Sylvester Stallone in First Blood, gave the movie an antagonist whose stubbornness turns a confrontation into something far larger. It established Dennehy as a formidable dramatic presence, but his career was never confined to one type of part. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Dennehy attended Columbia University on a football scholarship, paused his studies to serve in the United States Marine Corps and graduated in 1965. While working in regional theater, he supported his family through jobs including taxi driving and bartending. New York stage performances eventually led to television and film work in the 1970s. His early movies included the comedies Semi-Tough, Foul Play and 10. He later moved easily among thrillers, westerns, science fiction and character-driven drama, appearing in Gorky Park, Silverado, Cocoon, F/X and Presumed Innocent. He took a leading role opposite James Woods in Best Seller and won the Best Actor Award at the 1987 Chicago International Film Festival for The Belly of an Architect. Dennehy also found room for warmer and more playful work. He played Big Tom Callahan in Tommy Boy, Romeo’s father in Romeo + Juliet and voiced Django, Remy’s father, in Ratatouille. On television, his work ranged from the Jack Reed crime movies to To Catch a Killer, A Killing in a Small Town and The Blacklist. He received six Emmy nominations for television movies. The stage remained central to his career. Dennehy won Tony Awards for Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey into Night, and his performance as Willy Loman also earned a Golden Globe when presented on television. Across film, television and theater, he built a career on weighty dramatic roles while retaining the flexibility to surprise in comedy, animation and genre movies.

Charles Napier

Allen County

Charles Napier built a prolific career from the kind of presence casting directors rarely overlook: a square jaw, a commanding voice and an easy authority that could read as respectable, threatening or comically overblown. Frequently cast as corrupt cops, soldiers, businessmen and other hard-edged figures, he became a familiar character actor across film and television without being confined to one genre. Born on April 12, 1936, in Mount Union, Kentucky, in Allen County, Napier took an indirect route to the screen. He served in the United States Army, rising to sergeant, before studying art and physical education at Western Kentucky University. He initially wanted to coach basketball and later taught art, but encouragement from instructor D. Russell Miller and experience in community theater moved him toward acting. After time in New York and Florida, Napier headed to California. A bit part in Mission: Impossible earned him a union card, while his film debut came unexpectedly when Russ Meyer cast him as the male lead in Cherry, Harry & Raquel! Napier did more than act on the production, also helping with cameras, stunts, makeup and driving. The road ahead was not immediately secure, but a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock eventually brought him a one-year Universal Studios contract. Napier’s screen work made good use of his forceful energy. He played Tucker McElroy, the irritable leader of the Good Ol’ Boys, in The Blues Brothers and the bureaucratic CIA officer Marshall Murdock in Rambo: First Blood Part II. Jonathan Demme cast him in several films, including The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia; Napier considered his role as a judge in Philadelphia his career favorite. His television appearances ranged from The Oregon Trail and The A-Team to Knight Rider and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Star Trek viewers knew him both as Adam in “The Way to Eden” and General Denning in Deep Space Nine’s “Little Green Men.” He also had an extensive voice career, with work in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Men in Black: The Series, Squidbillies and The Simpsons. Before his death in 2011, Napier published a book about his life in Hollywood, Square Jaw and Big Heart—a title well matched to the screen persona he spent decades putting to work.

Julia Nickson-Soul

Singapore

Julia Nickson-Soul is a Singapore-born American actress who became widely known to international audiences through her role opposite Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). Born September 11, 1958, Nickson-Soul began her screen career in the early 1980s before landing the role of Co Bao, a Vietnamese intelligence operative who assists John Rambo during his mission to locate American prisoners of war. Intelligent, capable and courageous, Co becomes much more than Rambo's guide, developing a close emotional connection with him during the mission. Co Bao remains one of the most memorable supporting characters in the Rambo franchise, with her relationship with Rambo providing a rare glimpse of the soldier imagining a life beyond combat. Nickson-Soul went on to build a long career across film and television, appearing in productions including Glengarry Glen Ross, Sidekicks, Babylon 5, Walker, Texas Ranger and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Despite her extensive work since the 1980s, her performance as Co Bao remains especially well remembered by action-film fans and gives her an enduring place in the history of the Rambo series.

Steven Berkoff

France

Steven Berkoff has spent his career moving between acting, writing and directing, with theatre at the centre of it all. Born Leslie Steven Berks in Stepney on 3 August 1937, he trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and later studied physical theatre and mime at Jacques Lecoq’s school. That combination of classical training and physical performance helps explain the forceful, highly controlled presence he brings to both stage and screen. Berkoff’s theatre work is not a sideline to his acting career but its driving force. His early plays included adaptations of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and The Trial, followed by verse plays such as East, Greek, Decadence and West. He has also worked extensively as a theatre director and performer, including the solo production Shakespeare’s Villains and his two-monologue show One Man. In 1994, he directed and appeared in the film adaptation of Decadence. For movie audiences, Berkoff is especially associated with antagonists: Soviet General Orlov in Octopussy, corrupt art dealer Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II and gangster George Cornell in The Krays. These roles made good use of his sharp delivery and imposing theatricality. Berkoff has said that he finds playing evil characters flattering and that the best actors take on villainous parts. His screen career is broader than those memorable heavies suggest. He appeared as a police officer in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and as a gambler aristocrat in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Later roles included attorney Dirch Frode in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, while his television work has ranged from War and Remembrance and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Doctor Who and The Borgias. Berkoff has said that he accepted Hollywood roles to subsidise his theatre work, a revealing summary of a career in which screen acting and self-created stage work have remained closely connected.

Kurtwood Smith

New Lisbon,USA

Kurtwood Smith has built a career on characters who carry authority—and often make everyone around them nervous. Whether playing a ruthless antagonist, an exasperated father or a formidable official, he brings a clipped, grounded intensity that works equally well in drama, science fiction and comedy. Born on July 3, 1943, in New Lisbon, Smith grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley. He earned a B.A. from San Jose State College and an M.F.A. from Stanford University, then taught theatre arts at Cañada College from 1969 to 1975. His stage work earned him three Drama-Logue Awards, for performances in Billy Budd, Idiot’s Delight and Green Grow the Lilacs. On film, Smith is closely associated with Clarence Boddicker, the vicious criminal at the center of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop. He also appeared as Neil’s father in Dead Poets Society, played Sheriff Deegan in Last of the Dogmen and portrayed Ku Klux Klan leader Stump Sisson in A Time to Kill. These roles show how effectively he can turn sternness into menace, pressure or dark humour depending on the material. Television gave Smith one of his defining parts: Red Forman on That ’70s Show, which ran from 1998 to 2006. His dry delivery and permanently tested patience made Red more than a stock sitcom father. Smith reprised the role in 2023 for That ’90s Show. His television work also includes 24, Medium, Resurrection, Patriot, Worst Week and The Ranch. Smith has repeatedly ventured into science fiction, including three distinct Star Trek roles: the Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Thrax on Deep Space Nine and Annorax on Voyager. He has also built an extensive voice-acting career across animation, video games and stop-motion projects, including Ultra City Smiths. Across formats, his great strength remains the same: making forceful characters feel specific rather than merely severe.

Julie Benz

Pittsburgh, USA

Julie Benz has built a career around characters who rarely stay comfortable for long. Whether working in horror, science fiction, crime drama or comedy, the Pittsburgh-born American actress brings an alert, grounded quality to stories driven by danger and uncertainty. Before acting, Benz was a figure skater. She began skating at three and continued until a stress fracture interrupted that path when she was 14. Local theatre followed, including a role in Street Law, and she made her film debut with a small speaking part in the “The Black Cat” segment of Two Evil Eyes. After graduating from New York University in 1993, she moved to Los Angeles and began assembling a varied run of television work. Her breakthrough came through a role she hadn't originally pursued. Benz auditioned to play Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then was cast as the vampire Darla in the pilot. The part expanded beyond its initial scope, and she later reprised Darla throughout the spin-off Angel. It became an early demonstration of her ability to give genre characters more emotional weight than their plot function might suggest. Benz found another defining television role as Rita Bennett, Dexter Morgan’s girlfriend and eventual wife, in Dexter. Rita’s comparative warmth gave the series a vital connection to ordinary domestic life, while the character’s vulnerability placed Benz at the centre of some of its darkest turns. Her television work also includes Robin Gallagher in Desperate Housewives, Stephanie Powell in No Ordinary Family, Mayor Amanda Rosewater in Defiance and Abby Dunn in Hawaii Five-O. Her film roles have kept her close to similarly tough terrain. She played Brit, one of Jigsaw’s five victims, in Saw V; Angela in Punisher: War Zone; and appeared opposite Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. Across those projects and her extensive television career, Benz has shown a particular knack for playing people forced to find their footing inside unstable worlds.

Graham McTavish

Glasgow

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Paz Vega

Carmen Delgado

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Yvette Monreal

Gabriela

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Sergio Peris-Mencheta

Hugo Martinez

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Adriana Barraza

Maria Beltran

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Óscar Jaenada

Victor Martinez

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David Caruso

Forest Hills

David Caruso built a career around a particular kind of controlled intensity. Whether playing a conflicted police officer, a federal prosecutor or the man calmly taking charge of a crime scene, he could make stillness feel like action. Born in Forest Hills, Queens, on January 7, 1956, Caruso found an early education in movies while working as a cinema usher. He later claimed that he watched as many as 80 films a week and acted out scenes with his co-workers at the back of the theater. Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney were among the performers he regarded as role models. Caruso made his first film appearance as Danny in Getting Wasted in 1980. He credited his role as Topper Daniels in An Officer and a Gentleman with getting him noticed, while First Blood gave him a memorable supporting part as Deputy Mitch Rogers, the youngest and only sympathetic member of Sheriff Teasle’s department. Further film roles followed in Blue City, China Girl and Twins, alongside television work that included a recurring role as gang leader Tommy Mann in Hill Street Blues. His major breakthrough arrived in 1993 with NYPD Blue. As Detective John Kelly, Caruso brought a clipped, restless edge to the police procedural and won a Golden Globe Award for the performance. He left early in the second season, then pursued leading film roles in the thrillers Kiss of Death and Jade. A return to television with the legal drama Michael Hayes lasted one season. Caruso later appeared alongside Russell Crowe in Proof of Life and took the lead in Brad Anderson’s psychological horror film Session 9. His most sustained success, however, came as Lieutenant Horatio Caine in CSI: Miami. Across ten seasons and all 232 episodes, the sunglasses, measured delivery and pre-theme one-liners became inseparable from the show’s style. He also played Caine across three CSI programs, the first actor in the franchise to do so as the same character. After CSI: Miami ended in 2012, Caruso retired from acting and became involved in the art business, closing a screen career defined by tough roles, sharp restraint and one of television crime drama’s most recognisable rhythms.

Bill McKinney

Chattanooga

Bill McKinney built a long screen career around a presence that could make even a supporting role feel dangerous. Born William Denison McKinney in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on September 12, 1931, he had an unsettled childhood that included 12 moves. At 19, he joined the Navy during the Korean War, serving for two years on a minesweeper in Korean waters before being stationed at Port Hueneme, California. After his discharge in 1954, McKinney remained in California and studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, where his classmates included Dustin Hoffman and Mako Iwamatsu. He later moved on to Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. Acting was not yet a full-time living, and he worked as an arborist until the mid-1970s. McKinney made his film debut in She Freak in 1967 and appeared on television the following year in The Monkees. His role as Lobo in Alias Smith and Jones brought further attention, but Deliverance gave him his breakthrough in 1972. As the backwoods mountain man who assaults Ned Beatty’s character, McKinney became central to one of the film’s most disturbing sequences. That intensity made him a natural fit for rugged dramas and westerns. His early films included Junior Bonner, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and The Parallax View. After working with Clint Eastwood in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, McKinney became a recurring presence in Eastwood films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way but Loose, Any Which Way You Can and Pink Cadillac. He also played Jay Cobb in John Wayne’s final film, The Shootist. Later appearances in First Blood, Back to the Future Part III and The Green Mile showed how readily McKinney could add menace or weathered authority to a film. His work also extended across television and voice acting, including Jonah Hex in Batman: The Animated Series. In the late 1990s, he took up singing and released Love Songs from Antri, an album of standards and country and western songs. McKinney died in 2011, leaving behind a body of work shaped by tough characters, western landscapes and a screen presence filmmakers repeatedly put to good use.

Chris Mulkey

Viroqua

Chris Mulkey has built the sort of career that rewards anyone who pays attention to supporting players. Born in Viroqua on May 3, 1948, the American actor and film producer has worked across film and television, moving between long-running parts, brief appearances and genre projects without being tied to a single kind of role. One of Mulkey’s most sustained television roles came in Any Day Now, where he played the husband of Annie Potts’s character from 1998 to 2002. His other credits include Twin Peaks, 24, Boardwalk Empire, Friday Night Lights, Boomtown, Justified and Baretta, along with the NBC television movie Knight Rider. It is a collection of projects that places him across several distinct corners of American television. His film work is similarly varied. Mulkey costarred with John Jenkins and Karen Landry in the 1988 independent film Patti Rocks, appeared in the science-fiction action film The Hidden and followed with the 1989 science-fiction cop film K-9000. He also played Jacob “Hawk” Manley in the Wing Commander franchise. Later screen appearances include Cloverfield, Captain Phillips, The Purge, Slow Burn, Sanitarium, The Identical and On the Basis of Sex. In 2014, he made a cameo appearance in Whiplash. Mulkey’s career also extends beyond conventional film and television roles. He played the main character in Supertramp’s controversial 1985 music video for “Brother Where You Bound,” another credit that fits the wide-ranging shape of his screen work. He is also connected to music through his southern blues band, Chris Mulkey and Blue Highway. Taken together, these roles make Mulkey a familiar presence across decades of movies and television: sometimes central, sometimes passing through, but repeatedly adding another distinct credit to an unusually broad body of work.

Matthew Marsden

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Paul Schulze

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Tim Kang

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Joaquín Cosío

Don Manuel

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Marc de Jonge

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Sasson Gabai

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George Cheung

Hong Kong

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