Acknowledging actors and actresses who have gradually become more recogniseable with each viewing
Dedicated to wearysloth, who will undoubtedly find some of the captures useful for his
Actors Compendium, and Gerald Lovell, who I know will be on the same wavelength.
This has similarities to three other threads here:
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ac...se-people.html,
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ac...there-you.html, and
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ac...actresses.html. The first two concentrate on Extras, actors who are either seen in the background of a scene or we're only allowed a brief glimpse of amongst the jurors, partygoers, etc. Nearly always in non-speaking roles.
'Unnoticed' is my way of describing those who
do get to say a line or two, and are named in the end credits, but whose appearances are so fleeting they're quickly forgotten, until they're screencapped. The examples I have chosen at that thread, and repeated sightings of a number of Extras, made me realise that I hadn't paid as much attention to a film or programme as much I thought. We'll always discover something new if we put our minds to it (which is how those threads for Books, Magazines, Posters, etc. came about).
The actors I have in mind for this thread will have a bit more screen time, elevating them from Unnoticed to Bit Part Players. Sometimes
even a few seconds can make all the difference, preferably with a shot of them on their own. Like Alison Seebohm in
The Servant 
:

Remember her? The lonely Girl in Pub who 'settles' for James Fox and later seen giggling at his drug-fuelled party?
I think I'd recognise Alison easily enough now but two years ago, when I first posted that capture, I had to rely on my screencaps from
The Servant and her slightly more fulfilling role in
A Hard Day's Night to Get to Know her better (she played Kenneth Haigh's Secretary in the latter). This is what the thread is all about, being able to form a more vivid impression of what some of the 'newer' faces look like.
My first subject is
Richard McNeff, an actor who, judging by his filmography, I must have seen several more times than the three appearances I'd like to highlight here. The first time I made a mental note of him was in the B-movie
The Painted Smile, in which he played a Police Inspector looking for the missing Liz Fraser:

With his back to camera is unhelpful bookseller Harold Berens, who thinks he's lost a couple of customers
(Ray Smith and David Hemmings)! Only when Richard exits the scene do we get to see the actor full face.
That was all I really knew him from until
another screencapping session, this time for
The Baron episode
The High Terrace (1967), allowed me a more in-depth look at some of the uncredited actors in the pre-credits sequence. A young couple and a policeman witness Jan Holden apparently jumping to her death from Southwark Bridge. I just had a feeling that the anxious copper was Richard McNeff:
And so it proved! Not only did our Gerald confirm it was him, at
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ac...policemen.html, but so did the actor's
son, also called Richard. A pleasant surprise to see him posting here. I submitted his father's name to the illustrious cast on the episode's
IMDb page and it was soon accepted
I'd seen the first episode of
Special Branch,
Troika (1969), a couple of times by then and was aware that Richard played one of the Radio Operators. This was shot on black-and-white video tape, which I've always found a bit creepy (going back to childhood) and difficult to capture. Of the few that I did from his scene with Cockney colleague Ray Barron over the weekend, I'm most pleased with this one:

"What's the schedule?"
Three screencapping sessions over a period of 14 months (
The Painted Smile one goes back to December 2009) and they've all helped me recognise Richard McNeff a little better each time. He will be easy to spot when I next see him, in what I don't know. It does seem odd that I've already forgotten his appearance in
The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder, as a Detective (he played a lot of policeman I've noticed!), and that nothing comes to mind from
two viewings of his
Callan episode.
The other credits that I have on DVD are an early episode of
The Saint called
The Fellow Traveller,
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em:
The R.A.F. Reunion, and the
Armchair Thriller story
The Victim, another one I watched just a few months ago. It will be fascinating to discover/be reminded of what he did and I'm very much looking forward to showing you the results.