5. Hal Holbrook
Episode: Season Six: The Fleshy Part of the Thigh The Academy Award nominated actor features in one episode of the sixth season. When Tony suffers a near-fatal gunshot from Junior, he spends several weeks in hospital. When Tony comes out of his existentialist coma he meets the Lincoln star. Holbrook plays a physicist who clues Tony into the
interconnectivity of all life, telling him how no event or entity can be understood independent from the rest of the world how everything is connected. Holbrooks musings on quantum physics are lost on Paulie Walnuts who during a bad signalled boxing match on satellite TV abruptly challenges: youre so f***in smart, fix the TV! This is all taken in by Tony who is going through an existential and spiritual awakening which is welcomed after hearing a pastors creationist ideas. Holbrook went on to star in Sean Penns Into the Wild the following year as Ron, the lonely leather worker who passes his trade onto Alexander Supertramp (Emile Hirsch) and offers to adopt him as his grandchild. Holbrooks touching performance earned an Academy Award nomination the in 2007 but lost out to Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YncuzRxj0I