Outside of his music, his spoken word performances, authoring several books, and being a talking head in every rock documentary every recorded, Henry Rollins has amassed a hodgepodge acting career of bit parts in TV and film over the last 25 years, making him fairly recognizable to most of America as "that guy from that one thing." To the average viewer, he's that semi-familiar, salt-and-pepper tough guy, flexing his tattooed forearms in roles like Cop #2, Different Kind of Cop #2, or Security Guard Who Is Also a Retired Cop #2. But for fans of his work in Black Flag and Rollins Band, it's always a fun surprise to see Hank pop up in random movies in which he stands an extremely high chance of being torn to shreds by the film's end.
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Rollins has no pretensions about his talents as an actor nor much discrimination about the roles he chooses to take on. "I'm not an actor," he once said of his career. "You'd think Hollywood would have figured that out." His refreshingly workmanlike approach has garnered him something of a Gen X cult following because, well, anything that occupies enough of his time that he doesn't start a third iteration of a reunited Black Flag is a welcome distraction.We recently spent five perfectly good days watching nothing but the collected films of Mr. Henry Rollins so that you don't have to. Below is a list of Rollins' acting roles, ranked in order from worst to best.Ground rules for rankings:Character: Guy who sits in a carScenes of the Crime is basically the movie Drive if it was produced by the studio that makes all those afternoon TNT Network movies and all the actors got their hair styled at Supercuts. Rollins gets just a split second of screen time in this movie and it's not entirely clear what his character's purpose is other than sitting in a car on a stakeout. A tremendous let-down, although to be honest, he could have played every single character in the whole movie and still not have saved this thing.
- Movies only. No TV. (Sorry, Sons of Anarchy fans.)
- No voice acting roles.
- Nothing where he plays himself.
- Rankings are determined by a number of factors: How much screen time Rollins gets, how well suited he is for the role, how good the movie is, how ripped his trap muscles look, etc.
19. Scenes of the Crime (2001)
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18. The New Guy (2002)
17. Kiss Napoleon Goodbye (1990)
16. Suck (2009)
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15. Feast (2005)
14. Desperate But Not Serious (Reckless + Wild) (2000)
13. Lies & Alibis (2006)
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12. Heat (1995)
11. Bad Boys II (2003)
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10. The Devil's Tomb (2009)
9. Jack Frost (1998)
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8. Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
7. Lost Highway (1997)
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6. The Last Heist (2016)
5. Morgan's Ferry (2001)
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4. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
3. In the House of Flies (2012)
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