Hey! It's That Towering Tough Guy!

... the real triumph for Adam Baldwin in 1980 was his role as Ricky Linderman in My Bodyguard. For those sad, soul-bankrupt few of you who haven't seen this epochal film, Baldwin played a hulking, brooding loner with a mysterious and violent past. His protective services are retained by Chris Makepeace -- the spindly, afroed nerd -- in an effort to fend of Moody, a vicious school bully, played effectively by a then-unknown and too-young-to-shave Matt Dillon.

So Makepeace enlists Linderman, and then Moody gets his own bodyguard, this crazy guy, and then it turns out Linderman won't fight, and then the crazy guy throws Linderman's motorcycle in the lake...okay, now I'm going to start crying...

Ever since, Baldwin's been busy doing two things: (1) playing a string of nameless, towering toughs (he is 6'4", after all) in movies such as Predator 2, Wyatt Earp, and Independence Day, as well as appearing in countless lesser efforts (and you know we're veering into sketchy territory when we talk about "lesser efforts" to Predator 2 and Wyatt Earp) such as Cold Sweat, Deadbolt, and Sawbones. And (2) convincing people that he's not one of the Baldwin brothers. Because he's not. Seriously. It's Alec, Stephen, Billy, Daniel, Tito, Donnie, Ryan, "Ace," Stretchy, and Kip. No Adam.

Source

We never heard of Fametracker before picking up Hey! It's That Guy! for Tom's birthday.

In a family like ours, a book about character actors, especially when as wittily written as this one, is sure to be a hit. You can hardly turn around without having someone reading you a clever bit about some actor. And when you look at the photo ... "Hey! It's that guy ... who was in my mind's eye!"

We love the book and we love the website. Surely I'll be feature a few more H!ITG! profiles here in the future. They're irrisistible.