In an interview Christopher Walken once explained that he wanted to create a character that would eventually have people write characters toward.
“You know… we need a sort of slightly off center, almost crazy, kinda… you know… Christopher Walken-type. Um, hey… is Christopher Walken available?”
In character acting this is golden. Walken created a type. Other really great actors along that line are the dearly deceased Andreas Katsulas and Vincent Schiavelli.
Actresses have a much harder time at this because you want to create a character, not fall into a stereotype. But sometime the stereotype is great because it does guarantee work. One favourite in recent years who’s gotten great exposure as ‘the older woman’ is Alice Drummond
But recently I was looking thru television actors to see what they’d done previously. As I mentioned, I’ve been heavily into Heroes of late. One of the Actresses on the show is Ali Larter. Ali plays spoiler