10 Supporting Movie Characters Who Deserve Their Own Film

The Usual Suspects has a literal rogue’s gallery of great characters and character actors, including the much missed Pete Postlethwaite, Gabriel Byrne, and Justin Bieber’s father-in-law Stephen Baldwin in his one good film. The cult classic character, though, is Fred Fenster, played gleefully incomprehensibly by the incomparable Benicio del Toro.

Fenster’s presence is mysterious and provides much needed comic relief. Del Toro has said that, upon realising that his character was a mere plot device, he adopted a mush mouthed speaking style on the basis it didn’t really matter what he was saying.

The frankly unprofessional choice makes the character something brilliant, a delightfully strange presence in a film that for the most part takes itself deadly seriously. It helps that del Toro is so charismatic a performer that it doesn’t much matter what he actually says - he’s endlessly watchable.

The enigmatic nature of the film leaves the viewer wanting to know more about most of the characters, but none more so than Fenster. He may need some lessons in diction, however, before he’s ready to carry a movie.