James Remar

Rugged, intense character player with a receding hairline, average-guy good looks and a slightly squinty stare, adept at vicious, sometimes psychopathic roles but susprisingly skilled in more sensitive portryals, as shown by his turn on "Sex and the City." Remar gained recognition as a punk who gets chained to a park bench by a woman cop in his second film, Walter Hill's "The Warriors" (1979). That same year he garnered acclaim on Broadway as Richard Gere's lover in the concentration camp drama, "Bent". Remar subsequently kept busy primarily in features, playing tough guy Dutch Schultz in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (1984), one of the Neanderthals in "Clan of the Cave Bear" (1986), and an experienced military officer who doubts the power of Shakespeare in "Renaissance Man" (1994).

Remar has occasionally garnered roles which highlight a more vulnerable side, such as his guitarist who gets a break in the Oscar-winning short, "Session Man" (1991) or his artist who falls in love with a gargoyle come to life in the best segment of the horror anthology, "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie" (1990). He has also played out of type in some of his TV work, but most of his telefilms ("Desperado: The Outlaw Wars" 1989, "Deadlock" 1991, "Indecency" 1992) have been routine. Remar remained, in fact, still best known for his galvanizing performances as a homicidal maniac escaped from prison in "48 Hours" (1982; also directed by Hill, with whom Remar reteamed for 1995's "Wild Bill") and as a no-nonsense cop in Gus Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989)--Remar cleverly sent up some of his earlier roles in the half-baked spoof "Fatal Instinct" (1993), as a killer released from prison out to get Armand Assante.

All of that changed for the actor when, after laboring for several years in B-movie fare and failed TV efforts, he was cast as the wealthy hotel magnate Richard Wright on the wildly popular HBO comedy series "Sex and the City" in 2002, the first man on the series to capture the heart of sex-crazed Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall). Remar's hard-edged, gravel-voiced persona lent the character an approrpiate air of authority and intimidation, but the actor also showed a surprisingly sensitive, romantic and vulnerable side...even if the character's infidelities proved too much for Samantha to handle. For Remar, the fresh bout of exposure landed him new big screen gigs in A-list productions, including "2 Fast, 2 Furious" (2003), "Duplex" (2003) and--as a porn producer competing to persuade his biggest star (Elisha Cuthbert) to come back to his fold--the comedy "The Girl Next Door" (2004).