Biography
Described by filmmaker and collaborator Russ Meyer as appearing to smile on one side of his mouth while scowling on the other, lantern-jawed character actor Charles Napier essayed a gallery of mad, bad and dangerous detectives, soldiers and cowboys in a wide variety of films, ranging from Meyer's "Supervixens" (1973) to "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985), "The Grifters" (1991), "Miami Blues" (1991) and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). The latter was one of numerous small roles he played for director Jonathan Demme, who frequently cast him against type in "Handle with Care" (1977) and "Something Wild" (1986), and the off-kilter humor he showed in those films led to a second career as a wild card comic player in "The Blues Brothers" (1980) "The Cable Guy" (1997) and "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" (1998). Though he won no significant awards for his work, and struggled to come to grips with his status as a cult favorite, Napier was well loved by generations of movie and TV fans who literally grew up watching him, from his earliest appearances on "Star Trek" (NBC, 1966-69) to his outrageous work with Meyer and dozens upon dozens of low-budget action and horror films, in which he was unquestionably the high point, for over four decades. His death in 2011 was widely memorialized in the media and on the Internet, where fans paid tribute to one of Hollywood's hardest working character players.
