Talking of David Strathairn

Ah, bless him. David Strathairn has been in some cracking movies. He's been in movies by John Sayles (seven times no less, including the glorious Eight Men Out) and, of course, he played Pierce Morehouse Patchett in LA Confidential. In that role he is forever ingrained into the minds of Helen Lisette and myself, not least because when we were in New York for the 2001 Oscars, me and HLW had a bit of a brainblock and couldn't recall the poor actor's name --- just that he had played PMP. There we were, slightly jetlagged still, stumbling over TV channels one late night and finding a made-for-TV production about gangsters in which he was a minor player. "That's erm... Pierce Patchett! Erm... what's his face! ARGH!" At which point we put on coats on top of our nightclothes, ran down stairs, paid a well useful dollar note into the internet-connected computer in the Herald Square Hotel lobby and gleefully used IMDB to retrieve the name of David Strathairn. Needless to say, we have never since forgotten his name!