This week’s Unsung Hero of Cinema is a guy who, despite only having a “handful” of film credits to his name has helped bring a few well loved movies and TV shows to life.
Christopher Hart.
If you don’t recognise Christopher that’s ok and kind of the point of this new feature.
You might however recognise his hand...
That’s because he’s the chap that the disembodied hand, “Thing” from the Addams Family movies belongs to.
He also provided his “hand acting talents” for the 1999 cult favourite, Idle Hands in which he again played a severed (and this time possessed/murderous) hand.
His hand has appeared in a 1999 episode of Angel, and you can see the whole actor (legs, head, torso and everything) playing a magician in a 1989 episode of one of my favourite shows of all time, Columbo, entitled “Columbo Goes to the Guillotine”.
Magic, as it happens is where Christopher started out. From a young age he was obsessed with it after finding a book about it in his local library. By the age of 16 he’d become a talented magician and was accepted into The Magic Castle’s junior program (an academy of magic arts that’s very hard to get into).
He eventually began working in Hollywood, demonstrating tricks at a magic shop called Hollywood Magic. This led to opportunities to perform in front of celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Mohamed Ali among others.
His talents soon caught the attention of legendary magician David Copperfield who started using him as a roadie for his show. He was so impressed by Christopher’s knowledge of magic in fact that he started to use him in his shows, both live and on TV.
His sleight-of-hand magic is what he believes has given him the dexterity to play the hand characters he’s famous for.
Although “hand roles” eventually dried up for him, Christopher still performs as a magician on various TV shows and in hotels and casinos in America.
Give the man a hand…!
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