How invested the audience is in an actor will usually determine whether or not they remember every movie they’ve seen the person in since Dean Norris is a hard face to forget, even though some folks have done so in the past. Norris has starred in quite a few movies and TV shows in his time and it’s kind of impossible to remember all of them in one sitting, but there are a few movies that a lot of people appear to have forgotten that he was in, even if it was just for a few brief moments. The fun thing about this guy is that a lot of the time he does play some sort of law enforcement agent, or someone with at least some authority in his given profession. One might almost think that he has a kind of interest in law enforcement or in positions of authority, but looking at his bio it’s evident that he’s never held any position in the military or in law enforcement. It just happens that he has an affinity for playing such roles apparently, which is all well and good since it’s allowed him to do quite well in his career.
Here are a few movies that you might have forgotten Dean Norris was in.
5. Lethal Weapon 2
One would almost think that anyone assigned to work in the same unit as Riggs and Murtaugh would have learned by the second movie that these guys are trouble magnets and tend to draw the biggest and worst villains thanks to the fact that they don’t always follow the rules. Norris played one of the detectives that get wiped out when the South Africans start cleaning house after their operation has been disturbed by the LAPD. His death wasn’t the worst since the lady who was killed by the exploding diving board was pretty brutal, but the radio bomb was still pretty brutal since it came out of nowhere.
4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
His part in this movie is pretty small since he’s one of the cops that goes rushing into the building after it’s been established that Miles Dyson is down and the others have escaped. Once he and the others see that Dyson is doing his best to keep from triggering the bomb before they escape they try to rush out, but obviously that doesn’t go too well. This is the kind of role that one doesn’t really expect to see someone like Norris since it’s kind of a throwaway role given that there wasn’t a lot of focus on the officers other than to show that they were being handled easily by the terminator and that they were there for effect.
3. Total Recall
It was hard to recognize a couple of actors in this movie, but Dean had so much makeup covering his head and face that it was easy to see how Tony was kind of hard to place given that half of his face looked like someone had shoved a pizza into and just left it there. But he did play a part of the resistance that was firmly set against the villain, Cohaagen, and was someone that showed up from time to time. One has to wonder how long it took to attach the makeup to his person and how uncomfortable it might have been after a while since it looked as though the facial prostheses might have weighed a bit.
2. The One
This was another small role since he played a guard that was transporting Jet Li’s character from his cell to the transport that was meant to carry him somewhere else. But of course, he and the other officers didn’t get there since the alternate version of Li’s character that had gone around killing all of his other selves was there and he was faster and stronger than any of them, meaning everyone around him appeared to be moving in slow motion, which was kind of a cool effect. For being such an interesting idea though this movie didn’t really go anywhere, but it does feel as though someone might want a reboot at some point.
1. Starship Troopers
He played the part of Rico and Zim’s superior in this movie and his involvement kind of ended after it was established that earth was going to war with the bugs, at which point Rico was reinstated and allowed to join up with his unit again. This movie was all kinds of crazy since it went in a really odd direction and yet was still entertaining. It did spawn a few sequels and there has been talk of a reboot in the past, but whether or not that will ever happen is kind of sketchy since it would involve a lot of ambition and the ability to get people to care again.
I know, a lot of people still remember Dean as Hank from Breaking Bad.
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