A Look Back At The Randomly Stacked Cast Of 2001's 'Black Hawk Down'
We were talking a little about war movies on LCB and one came to mind in particular: 'Black Hawk Down'. Besides being a great movie, it's one of the ultimate "Oh, that guy!" movies. Let's take a quick look at the massive cast that you may have forgotten about.
Tom Hardy
Hardy did some shorts and also a brief stint on 'Band of Brothers' before filming BHD, but this was his first film role ever. A little fun fact via his wiki: "During this time, Hardy also had a brief stint as a rapper and hip hop producer with his friend Edward Tracy (under the name "Tommy No 1 + Eddie Too Tall"), with whom he recorded a mixtape called Falling On Your Arse In 1999 that remained unreleased until 2018"
Can't even lie, it kinda bangs.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
You definitely know him best as Jaime Lannister, but you should also watch 'Shot Caller', which is one of the more underrated movies on Netflix right now. This was his first Hollywood role and he played Medal of Honor recipient Gary Gordon. In an interview he said "My first US movie was 'Black Hawk Down' and a friend helped me put myself on tape up on the attic over my apartment in Copenhagen. We shipped it out and I got lucky."
Ty Burrell
I really want to find out who was so shocked by this that they uploaded the ultra 4k version to youtube. Anyway yea, that's right, motherfucking Phil Dunphy was a pararescueman airdropping into Mogadishu. This was only his second film role ever, a few years before he played the really horny guy in 'Dawn of the Dead'.
Orlando Bloom
BHD came out only a few days after 'Lord of the Ring's: The Fellowship of the Ring', marking the first two speaking role movies he ever did. Now, he has been in $4,573,927,728 worth of movies. I'll admit this is a troubling trend, though.
Jeremy Piven
Before he was screaming at his assistants in Entourage, he was a wise ass pilot in BHD. He also had plenty of roles in movies before this, including this inexplicable shot from 'Heat' where he looks 50 years older than he did in Entourage.
Eric Bana
I fucking love Eric Bana. He's crushed just about every role I've ever seen him in, and frankly it's bullshit that he doesn't get more roles. That said, I found out that he was a sketch comic in the 90s, and was popular in his native Australia for his "good" impressions. Take a look for yourself…
Ewan McGregor
Motherfucking Obi-Wan Kenobi moonlighting as a U.S. Army ranger! McGregor was already a rising star before this, having been in Episode I and 'Trainspotting' with BHD costar Ewen Bremner before this.
William Fichtner
William Fichtner's face is action movie comfort food for me. Check this out:
His opening sequence in the bank during 'The Dark Knight' was one of my favorite stage-setting intros.
Tom Sizemore
I'll just leave it at that…
Ioan Gruffudd
Gruffudd had already hit paydirt in 'Titanic', but after this he played Sir Lancelot, Mr. Fantastic, and the piss freak from 'Horrible Bosses'
Jason Isaacs
Isaacs is one of the most underrated actors I can think of off the top of my head. Besides being maybe a top 5 bad guy ever in 'The Patriot', he was also fantastic as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter, General Zhukov in 'The Death of Stalin', and his many voice roles including The Inquisitor in 'Star Wars: Rebels'.
Josh Hartnett
I'm not really sure what happened to Josh Hartnett. He was on top of the world for like a 5 year period from 2000-05, doing blockbusters like this and 'Pearl Harbor' as well as '40 Days and 40 Nights' and 'Lucky Number Slevin'. Just going through his wiki, it looks like he decided to take a break from acting after hitting his zenith. Power to you, man. This is the most recent picture I can find of him on Getty, and he looks like he's doing just fine.
Sam Shepard
Shepard is a legend not for his outstanding acting performances, but for his contributions to theater. He's widely considered to be one of the best American playwrights of the 20th century, with a ton of his work still being performed today by pretty famous actors. Right before he passed, he also gave a fantastic performance in Season 1 of Bloodline, which was great television.
In case you missed them, here are the streaming recommendations from this week.