Chris Sarandon

Sarandon's career started at the top — or close enough. Landing an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor on your very first film role is the kind of thing that doesn't happen often, and his work as Leon Shermer in *Dog Day Afternoon* (1975) made it clear this wasn't someone who was going to fade quietly into supporting-player obscurity (Wikipedia). The role required real emotional exposure alongside Al Pacino at the height of his powers, and Sarandon held his own. The decade that followed built his range on stage and screen, but it's the mid-1980s through early 1990s where Sarandon's pop-culture footprint gets genuinely outsized. *Fright Night* (1985) gave him Jerry Dandrige, a vampire who's charming right up until he isn't — one of the better horror villains of that era, and a role that still gets referenced whenever the film comes up in conversation. Then came Prince Humperdinck in *The Princess Bride* (1987), a role that's practically a masterclass in theatrical villainy without tipping into camp. *Child's Play* (1988) followed, and then — maybe the most durable of all — the voice of Jack Skellington in Tim Burton's *The Nightmare Before Christmas* (1993), a performance Sarandon has reprised in video games including *Kingdom Hearts* and *The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge* (Wikipedia). Hard to say if the typecasting that came with so many genre roles was ever frustrating for him, but the record shows he didn't let it narrow his output. Television kept him busy across decades — *ER*, *Charmed*, *Law & Order*, *Orange Is the New Black* — and his Broadway work, including *The Rothschilds* and *The Two Gentlemen of Verona*, signals an actor who's always taken the craft seriously beyond whatever the marquee role happened to be (Wikipedia). A career that spans six decades. That's not an accident.