NPCs - give me your actor references

[Flyspeck23]

Thanks@all so far, but keep 'em coming

Kurt Russel (Jack Burton): Ineffective mercenary or minor local hero

Consider that stolen (and why didn't I think of this?).

Cavalier= take a helping of Muhammid Ali, mix in equal amounts of Jonny Bravo and Eric Cartman. For the body language, think Dirk the Daring from the Dragons Lair video game.

The GM in the D&D game I'm playing in, on the other hand, uses pictures of various actors for his NPCs. It seems to work pretty well.

Pictures? Which ones?

Cerebus owns.

Used to
But that image reminds me... Bishop Powers might make a good NPC too. But what to use as a voice reference?

Sidney Greenstreet from The Maltese Falcon as an informant for hire.

One more reason to watch that movie again. Haven't done so for years...

I ran an old lady as a combative & crotchety old radical like the old woman & Dennis from Monty Python & the Holy Grail, "Help Help I'm being repressed!"

Monty Python in general might be a good source for NPCs - great idea

-Slash, of Guns 'N" Roses fame, as an exotic carpet dealer, who also imports various bizarre spell componenents.

Pretty weird... so, consider it stolen

-All the main characters in "The Big Lebowski", especially the Nihilists, in appropriate roles.

Yes, "The Big Lebowski" is a good source (as seems to be at least 50% of the Coen Brothers' movies - "Oh Brother, Where Are Thou" is another great one for that).
Personally, I'm using John Goodman (Walter) and Steve Buscemi (Donny) as a reference - and John Goodman in two other incarnations (Big Dan, "Oh Brother, Where Are Thou?" and that other "Dan"-character he played in the 80s).

you betcha.

Not sure what your point is, but let me rephrase: she, as a NPC, isn't pregnant IMC.
Or did you simply wanted to say that you're using that same reference?

 

[Psion]

Carl from 'Slingblade' keeps popping up at our gaming table.

I've used that one before. Sort of indirectly. My daughter has a PC game with a character with idioms sort of like a hyperactive version of the same, I used as an eccentric sage.


Last night I was running a game in Freeport. One of the PCs tried to bribe the higly placed Lord Defender Thorgrimm of the Wizards Guild to let him browse the library. For some reason, I slipped into the guard character from the old loony toons where Porky Pig tries to get onto a hollywood set: "So? You want me to be a nice guy?" (Porky nods) "And let you in there?" (Porky nods) "So I can lose my job?" (Porky starts to nod, then starts to shake head.) "Well I'm not a nice guy! And I'm not going to let you in there! And I am not going to lose my job!"

 

[Chimera]

I had a somewhat pompous cleric from a noble family that I ran like Charles Emerson Winchester from MASH (I even named him Emerson and nobody caught on...)

Heh. I used David Ogden Steirs (the actor who played Charles) as the model for the head cleric of the Storm God's sect, described as something like an ongoing regional frat party. If you can't hold your liquer, you won't make it in this sect.

Master Thespian (the Jon Lovitz SNL character) was the owner of the Three Masks Theater and Inn, the only theater in the Wild Lands. Slightly changed, he trained new Bards to work for him and took it badly if they ever left his service. The Three Masks was kind of the proto-typical "gay and alternative lifestyle" hangout in the Wild Lands.

Can't remember others right now, but I steal liberally from everywhere. Without shame.

 

[Tinner]

Yearbooks

My NPC's are never farther away than my high school and college yearbooks. After all, you spend 4 years or more around these people, you're bound to pick up some interesting quirks.
I'd imagine that a good 90% of my NPC's are based off people I went to school with. They're not as immediately recognizable as celebrities, and that helps keep versimilitude IMO. YMMV.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

A bunch of Jack Nicholson NPCs...

Jack Nicholson (Jake from Chinatown) as a corrupt cop.
Jack Nichplson (President from Mars Attacks) as a bitter Starfleet captain.
Jack Nicholson (the Devil in The Witches of Eastwick) as the Devil (or more accurately the Devil playing Jack Nicholson playing the Devil... he even quotes the movie...)

Sean Connery as a mercenary commander.

Morgan Freeman as a tired, burned out old cop.

Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle as a creepy, touch feely liche. (Though not a bad person as liches go...)

Robert deNiro as angry man...

And a bunch of others...

The Auld Grump

 

[demiurge1138]

I rarely do this, preferring to combine multiple actors or roles into one character, or not base them off of anyone in particular. The one time I did do this, to great effect, I made a goblin informant, named Dennis, sound like Edmund Blackadder from, well, The Black Adder. It worked very well, actually.

Demiurge out.

 

[Turanil]

Sure I make voices, grimaces, and else when I DM, but I don't try to base it on known actors. Nonetheless I do sometimes quote fantasy movies and it's generally funny. Such as PC reaching to the BBEG who then tells him: "So you've come to me my son?! Because, who I am if not your father?! I am the mighty mountain from which you take your source! MY SON!" (badly quoted I know, but in a game I generally don't have time to quote well).

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

People should do their best to work in:

Charles Nelson Reily
Paul Lynde
Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith from Lost in Space)

 

[Hand of Evil]

Robin Williams from the Fisher King

Steven Buscemi from every movie he has ever been in

Oliver Platt

 

[ivocaliban]

Anthony Daniels (C-3PO, Star Wars) - Young, bumbling wizard sidekick.
Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee (Characters from any Hammer film) - Various aristocratic villains and allies.
Patrick Warburton (Brock Sampson, The Venture Bros.) - Rough and ready justicar.
Klaus Kinski (Count Dracula, Nosferatu) - Pitiable, though thoroughly evil, vampire.
George C. Scott (Gen. "Buck" Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove) War-hungry LG Furyondian general.
Claude Rains (Capt. Louis Renault, Casablanca) - Corrupt, yet charismatic constable.
Charles Bronson (Bernardo O'Reilly, The Magnificent Seven) - Half-Rakshasa slave.*

*This was one of my more interesting creations, I think. Bronson's Bernardo O'Reilly was an outcast and a halfbreed (in this case Mexican and Irish). A loner by nature, but beloved by children. My half-rakshasa was the product of an Olman wise woman seduced by a twisted Rakshasa. He was eventually made a slave and bloodhound of the Scarlet Brotherhood, but was eventually rescued by the PCs. I expect his father will show up soon enough (now that the half-rakshasa has become a trusted ally of the PCs) and present an interesting sub-plot.

EDIT: I'm lucky none of my players watch movies older than Star Wars: A New Hope or most of my clever-seeming characters would be revealed as pale imitations of everyone from Boris Karloff to Toshiro Mifune.