10 Best Movie Characters Who Appear In Only One Scene

The actors and characters who truly maximised their minutes.

Pulp Fiction
Miramax

It takes a special kind of actor to be able to take a small, minute role, sometimes one that takes up merely a couple of minutes of screen time, and turn it into something special.

Not to say it's easy to be the headlining act of a film and serve up an unforgettable character, but at least there's a lot more that can be done to make your role memorable in such an instance. For those actors with a handful of minutes in front of the camera, it's all about maximising what's on the table and making the most of those minutes.

While blink-and-you'll-it cameos are always great, here it's all about shining a light on those character roles that are somewhere between a cameo appearance and a supporting player - those roles that are afforded one juicy scene to deliver the goods and make some movie magic gold.

By a combination of well-written characters, brilliant performances, and an importance to the overall narrative of their respective pictures, here are ten of the very best characters in cinema history who only appeared in one solitary scene.

10. Vincent Grey - The Sixth Sense

Pulp Fiction
Buena Vista Pictures

Donnie Wahlberg was already a familiar name by the time of his appearance in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense - what with Donnie Hangin' Tough as part of New Kids on the Block - but his performance as Vincent Grey put him on the map in a major way when it came to his acting career.

Vincent may have only been on-screen for a matter of minutes and just the one scene, yet he is the character who truly set the tone for what lay ahead in The Sixth Sense.

Having dropped a ludicrous 40 lbs for the role of the unhinged Vincent, Wahlberg's character is an angry, scared, and desperate ball of emotion who shoots Bruce Willis' Malcolm Crowe and then kills himself during the opening moments of Shayamalan's 1999 breakthrough picture.

While audiences spent 95% of The Sixth Sense watching an alive and well Malcolm, it would of course be revealed that Willis' character was actually dead courtesy of that opening scene gunshot. As such, it could be argued that Vincent is actually the most important and impactful character of the entire story.

If it weren't for Vincent, Malcolm wouldn't be dead, which in turn would mean Malcolm wouldn't be able to assist young Cole Sear.

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