but she's a girl...

Crossing that line

While watching Stargate on Sunday afternoon, I immediately recognised one of the guest stars as John Billingsley---the actor who plays Dr. Phlox in Enterprise---despite the fact that he wears quite a lot of special effects make up in Enterprise. I think that the writers of Stargate probably know their audience quite well, because they put in a lot of Star Trek related in-jokes about Klingons and the perils of wearing a red shirt. It was only when I caught myself laughing in a snorting, 'Beavis and Butthead' type manner¹, that the chilling truth dawned on me; I am dangerously close to crossing the thin line between geek-dom and nerd-dom. I mean, Stargate and Enterprise---what can I have been thinking!

Aside from outing myself as a borderline nerd, my point in relating this story is to highlight my unusual and almost completely useless talent---I can easily recognise actors, even when I have only ever seen them under several inches of alien prosthetics and blue pan stick.

I'm not quite sure what cues I use to pull off this feat. I'm quite good with voices (even just the general timbre of someone's voice), and the actors' mannerisms and way of moving are often a give-away. Unfortunately, I'm quite bad at remembering names, which means I have a lot of slightly Victoria Wood-esque conversations, along the lines of "Oh look, it's thingy. You know, he was in that film with the guy in the vest. And he was in that other thing with wotshisname. Oh come on, you must know who I mean!" There must be a market for this kind of thing, surely?

¹ "He said 'red shirt'! Unnh hnn urr."