It's Trigger!

[lackedpunch]

Blue Peter's Peter Duncan in the 1980 Flash Gordon film.

[Snake Plissken]

Nigel Hawthorne in Stallone's Demolition Man. Apparently he did it to raise the money to do The Madness of King George.

[lackedpunch]

Lionel Stander ( cuddly Max in Hart to Hart) in Polanski's "Cul De Sac"

[Janik]

Brosnan was of course also in The Long Good Friday.

I was watching The Wire with my brother when Clarke Peters (who played Albert Lambreaux) was on screen. My bro knew he'd seen him before somewhere. Turned out it was in The Professionals in the early 80s playing an African dictator.

Your confusing your David Simon shows there - Peters was Lestor Freeman in The Wire. He is also provide the tenor backing vocal (the 'Oh baby' and 'Well baby' and so on parts) for this. And has confirmed as much in interviews, so not an urban myth. That he was recording with British Artists gives an indication of some time in London, which makes him turning up in British TV shows less surprising.

Alan Rickman plays an effete hotel receptionist who George Smiley uses for quasi Dead Drops (i.e. Smilley often retrieves the items himself when they are needed) in the Alec Guinness TV version of Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy.

Edit - Or Smiley's People to be more exact. See here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toxyLrKBza4

[Various Artist]

So much greatness in this thread. I watched Smiley's People (for it was that series, not the preceding Tinker...) when it was reshown on late nights on the BBC a couple of years back, and did indeed do a double-take when I saw who the receptionist was being played by, because it's virtually a blink-and-you-miss-it part.

That's also a cracking nugget about Clarke Peters re Love And Affection. Brilliant song, of course.

Guy Siner ('Allo 'Allos Lieutenant Gruber) in Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks.

While on an 'Allo 'Allo thing, Kim Hartman, who plays Helga, is the aunt of Batman / Inception / Dunkirk director Christopher Nolan.

That last bit is an outstanding factoid as well.

Guy Siner is great in 'Genesis of the Daleks', it really threw me when I first saw that character after only knowing him from 'Allo 'Allo. He also crops up briefly in the first Pirates of the Caribbean – he's the harbourmaster Jack Sparrow speaks with in Port Royal, after Jack 'sails' into port perched atop the mast of a sinking ship and steps off onto the dock just as it disappears from under him.

[Various Artist]

Hah, I see you've already edited yourself while I was typing that, Janik.

[Janik]

I'm now digging through YouTube videos from Smiley's People. This is just brilliant:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oer2LoXYusY
I wonder how many TV shows nowadays would have the balls to do an 11 minute scene? And somehow manage to make what is essentially exposition feel so compelling.

[Janik]

One from this evening was Julia Davis playing the main character's wife in the latest episode of Electric Dreams. For various reasons, the queasy paranoiac atmosphere, the undertone of threat, a dangerous female character going by the name of Jill (albeit not one played by Davis), I found it very hard not to think of her as Jill Tyrell from Nighty Night whilst watching. Probably additionally because Tyrell is a very hard character to forget about.

[Various Artist]

Ooh, don't get me started with those videos Janik, I've just started watching that 11-minute one now you've linked to it.

And I've just remembered, fully in keeping with the spirit of this thread's OP, that the opening(?) episode of Smiley's People features some sort of brutal Soviet(?) assassin – played by Dudley Sutton, i.e. the dapper, charming, gentle Tinker from Lovejoy. Proper take-you-completely-out-of-the-moment stuff.

Edit: Yes, it's practically the first scene, where he appears to menace Eileen Atkins' Russian countess in London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vYAyq5l2Bs about 3:30m in.

[Satchmo Distel]

John Savident (Fred Elliott) has the trio of Coronation Street, Blake's 7 and Dr. Who on his CV. Perhaps uniquely so.

Mrs Mangel from Neighbors is in Picnic At Hanging Rock.

[Patrick Thistle]

Alf from Home and Away as a trigger happy villain in Crocodile Dundee 2. As a kid I couldn't get over Alf firing a machine gun out of a helicopter.

This was back when Neighbours and Home and Away were big tweenage/ teenage viewing.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Blue Peter's Peter Duncan in the 1980 Flash Gordon film.

He pops up in Stardust as well. As does Karl 'Brush Strokes' Howman.

[Janik]

Karl Howman is in Tinker Tailor (TV version) as well, playing Ricky Tarr.

And now we are going in circles.

[Janik]

Sorry, what am I talking about, that was Hywel Bennett. Shelley, not Brush Strokes.

[Snake Plissken]

Kathy Burke popping up in the recent film version of Tinker Tailor was a jarring moment.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Court_(TV_series). Always good for saying - "it's 'im!"

Regular actors included William Mervyn, John Barron, John Horsley, Edward Jewesbury, Richard Warner, Basil Dignam, Laurence Hardy, Frank Middlemass, and Basil Henson as judges, John Alkin, David Ashford, Keith Barron, Jonathan Elsom, Bernard Gallagher, Peter Jeffrey, Charles Keating, Maureen Lipman, T. P. McKenna, Dorothy Vernon, Richard Wilson and William Simons were among the most common faces as barristers.
Other (currently or subsequently) famous names to appear on the show included Eleanor Bron, Warren Clarke, Tom Conti, Brian Cox, Honey Bane, Philip Bond, Michael Elphick, Sheila Fearn, Colin Firth, Brenda Fricker, Derek Griffiths, Nigel Havers, Ian Hendry, Gregor Fisher, Ben Kingsley, Ian Marter, Mark McManus, Vivien Merchant, Mary Miller, Geraldine Newman, Judy Parfitt, Robert Powell, Peter Sallis, Anthony Sharp, Michael Sheard, Barbara Shelley, Juliet Stevenson, Patrick Troughton, Mary Wimbush, Peter Capaldi and Mark Wing-Davey. Bernard Hill made one of his first television appearances in 1976, when he played the foreman of the jury in the story Scard. Liz Dawn appeared as an uncredited extra for a non speaking part as a prison officer in Evil Liver.

[Various Artist]

Your list there VT reminds me of the joyous disconcertment (is that a word?) when Michael "Mr Bronson" Sheard turns up as Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The piercing look he bores through Indy before giving him his signature is no different to that he would give unruly schoolchildren in Grange Hill.

His presence in that list alongside two former/future Doctors (Troughton, Capaldi) and one companion (Marter) also reminds that Sheard turned up numerous times in Doctor Who over many years. His central role in 1988's 'Remembrance of the Daleks' is notable though for essentially being Mr Bronson, looking and acting the same as his fearsome Grange Hill character, only now promoted to headmaster of Coal Hill School – the same location where it all started with the First Doctor back in 1963.

Peter Sallis (also mentioned) turns up in DW in 1967's 'The Ice Warriors', in a very good 'straight' performance which is still impossible to divorce from the familiar version of him as Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine.

[Giggler]

John Savident (Fred Elliott) has the trio of Coronation Street, Blake's 7 and Dr. Who on his CV. Perhaps uniquely so.

Mrs Mangel from Neighbors is in Picnic At Hanging Rock.

Savident in A Clockwork Orange caught me off-guard too, when I bought the reissue as an 18-year-old in 1999.

[Snake Plissken]

Double checked Sheards IMDB entry confirmed he also was a U-Boat captain in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He played Nazis a lot, Hitler and Himmler multiple times.

Also another to do the Doctor Who / Blakes 7 / Coronation Street triumvirate. And The Professionals / The Sweeney / The New Avengers. Shit... down the rabbit hole I go...

[nmrfox]

Bruce Forsyth playing the strongarm villain in Bedknobs & Broomsticks.

[Satchmo Distel]

Tons of Neighbors and Home and Away actors had earlier roles in Prisoner Cell Block H, another Reg Watson wobbly set job. Al, Stefan Dennis, Mrs Mangel...

Prisoner's old crone Lizzie is in Mad Max.

[Snake Plissken]

Leonard Rossiter as a gangster in Steptoe and Son? And he pops up in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well, which was a bit jarring as I only ever knew him from Rising Damp and throwing drinks over Joan Collins.

Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain in The Sooty Show.

[Uncle Ethan]

Billy Connolly in The Hobbit part 34, riding in on a pig.

[ursus arctos]

Speaking of IMDB, the Ustinov/Suchet film noted above was Thirteen at Dinner.

[Stumpy Pepys]

The list of Dr Who / Blake's 7 crossovers is a very long one.