10 Movie Characters Who Debuted Much Earlier Than You Think

7. Edward "Brill" Lyle (Enemy Of The State) - The Conversation

Gene Hackman Enemy of the State The Conversation
Buena Vista & Paramount

The Character

Edward "Brill" Lyle (Gene Hackman), a paranoid former communications expert who has been in hiding from the NSA, and attempts to help protagonist Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) clear his name while exposing the NSA-sponsored assassination of a Congressman.

Their REAL Debut

It's not much of a secret that Gene Hackman was cast in the role of Brill as a callback to his iconic part as surveillance expert Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic The Conversation.

And the two roles slot together quite neatly within the same continuity, what with the characters' proximate physical appearance and similar paranoia about being recorded.

This fact isn't lost on Tony Scott's film, which features an NSA file photo of Brill that's literally just a picture of Caul from The Conversation.

It's in no way a leap to suggest that Caul might adopt an alias in order to stay off the grid, and nothing in either movie contradicts the other, so this is about as close to canon as you'll get without a formal confirmation.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.