Kevin Tighe

For a brief time, Kevin Tighe was a television star, thanks to the popular action drama "Emergency!" (ABC, 1971-77), but he earned greater fame and respect as a character actor in features and on television shows like "Matewan" (1986), "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993) and "Lost" (ABC, 2005-2010). After "Emergency" was cancelled, he reinvested himself in his craft, and emerged in the mid-1980s to play physically imposing heavies whose true threat lay in their words. Tighe's bad men unspooled dark promises of danger and disaster in his measured tones, often delivered with a malevolent half-smile. Though "Emergency" would remain a nostalgic favorite to generations of children who came of age in the 1970s, the sheer quality of Tighe's subsequent work far outshone his early TV fame, making him one of the most respected character actors in the business.