Sydney Greenstreet, An Appreciation

There are character-actors, and then there is Sydney Greenstreet. Who? The Fat Man. Greenstreet was a big-man, weighing-in at 300 lbs. when he made his screen-debut in the Maltese Falcon in 1941. Greenstreet had been on the stage since before WWI, but this was his introduction to the movie-going public. He was 62 in his screen-debut, something that will likely never happen again in Hollywood. His fame wouldn't last very-long, either, he was dead by 1954 (his last-role being in 1949--he was suffering from diabetes his entire film-career). But one-thing makes him great: he was constantly called 'fat', or 'the Fat Man', yet he never flipped-out over it. He never even acknowledged the fat-comments, he never lost-his-cool, and he was a brilliant actor who played villains better than almost anybody. Here's a toast to the Fat Man, may he be remembered forever as a great actor. The best actors are character-actors.