Originally published at: What's "tooth acting"? Comedian explains with perfect impressions of toothy actors (video) | Boing Boing
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IIRC, Fire Marshall Bill was at top tooth talker.
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Huh, she went all the way back to Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson.
I’d say more classic teeth actors would be Burt Lancaster and Jack Palance, but of course nobody born after 2000 know them.
Bill Hader gets it:
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I recently discovered The Champions, and this makes me think about actors like Alexandra Bastedo (playing Sharon Macready) who were often “tooth actors”, but their “tooth acting” was enhanced by things like overbites.
ETA: And now that reminds me of Beverly D’Angelo, another tooth actor.
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I’ll always remember Frank Gorshin’s imitation of Kirk Douglas. And yeah, I’m an old fogey, I recognized maybe three of the people she mentions in the video.
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Gorshin was a fantastic impressionist, and not too shabby in the tooth acting department either.
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There’s an episode of Chralie’s Angels (riffing off the film, “Juggernaut”) in which Gorshin runs though a series of Hollywood voices; really impressive. He had great energy and style.
And another “toothy actor” too. All the teeth.
@gracchus Don’t let this rot your teeth.
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One of the all-time great moments of tooth acting is delivered by Bob Hoskins at the end of The Long Good Friday. Hoskins’ character, a London gangster, is unexpectedly abducted by IRA terrorists (one of whom, in this scene, is played by a very young Pierce Brosnan).
Basically with his teeth, Hoskins conveys the stages of his comprehension of his own impending demise.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1ldZUQFr_9k
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Given how British dentistry is considered abroad, it’s surprising how many British “teeth actors” there are.
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We Brits have to have a whip around to get enough good teeth to outfit one actor. That actor then sends money back to us from Hollywood. This is why you’ve never seen Emilia Clarke and Rosemund Pike in a scene together.
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+1 for The Champions
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It’s a show I’m surprised I missed during my lifetime, and I’m currently halfway through the series. Not terrible, and I give it a 
for making an effort at inclusion when it comes to casting, despite racist attitudes of the day.
And some of the wild stuff you see at random, like the IRL Esso gas station with gas pumps right up against the windows of the station office, instead of standing seperately. 
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That’s another fantastic candidate for the “infinite gear-up” treatment - infinite tooth acting!
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To young to know about the late great Katharine Hepburn I suppose.
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I saw an episode of SCTV the other day where Catherine O’Hara (a tooth actor) portrayed Hepburn…
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There’s a girl whose Instagram videos pop up all the time of her talking about her experience as an American living in the UK and the cultural differences, I’ve noticed she has this thing where she seems to talk with her teeth always closed. Maybe a bit like the “all teeth” version at the end. Makes her seem like she’s holding back from expressing annoyance. Which is kinda the character she often plays when explaining British reactions to situations.
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He tells a great story of being booked to do Ed Sullivan on Feb 9, 1964. He talked about being really jazzed because the crowd was huge, seemed really excited, was pretty young, and was yelling to get the show going.
He’d been invited to perform his impressionist routine, featuring uncanny impressions of Kirk Douglas, Boris Karloff, Richard Widmark and Burt Lancaster, on the longest running variety program on television.
Frank had already appeared in American B-movie classics like Hot Rod Girl, Dragstrip Girl, Invasion of the Saucer Men and the comedy feature film, Where the Boys Are, by the time he was scheduled to be on Sullivan so he was used to a fair amount of attention but still, the screaming fans below his hotel room window took him by (mock) surprise. “How did all of those gals and guys know I’d be here?” he joked looking out over the growing crowd on the sidewalk. In fact, he was seeing spill-over from the general mania taking place further down the street at The Plaza Hotel where The Beatles were rumored to be staying.
Pandemonium had broken out on the sidewalk in front of the theater on Broadway from which The Ed Sullivan Show would broadcast. Frank took the scene in stride but comedians Mitzi McCall and Charles Brill, also scheduled to appear on the show that night, saw the massive crowds and were floored. “I swear to you, I turned to Mitzi and I said, ‘I didn’t know Frank Gorshin got so famous!’” Charles Brill recalled years later.
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The Sayaka Kanamori school of acting.
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