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In the late '60s and the '70s, Seymour Cassel was in the vanguard of independent film, making half a dozen pictures with writer/director John Cassavetes. He was even Oscar-nominated for his performance in Cassavetes's Faces. And yet these achievements are unknown to a generation that last saw him as Morty O'Reilly, the grinning, rundown talent agent to a pair of conjoined twins in Stuck on You.

And, uh...we are in that generation.

Fortunately for us, Seymour Cassel -- back in theatres this week in Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim, and on the small screen in NBC's widely hyped Heist -- has had a career resurgence, starting in the late '90s. Even though he turns up in some stinkers -- like Stealing Harvard and The Crew -- he makes good movies, too. You may have picked him out of the virtual sea of H!ITG!s populating the earnest, baseball-themed period drama 61*, for instance, in the service of another Cassavetes-like actor/auteur: Mr. Billy Crystal.

But seriously, Cassel has, in his twilight years, hooked up with another generation-defining director: Wes Anderson. Cassel's gentle, shambling persona meshes beautifully with the tone of Anderson's sweet cinematic fables. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Cassel is Dusty, a courtly hotel doorman who's not above posing as a doctor as part of a treasured guest's somewhat crooked scheme; Dusty takes to the role so well that he's diagnosing an eye injury by the end of the film.

But our favourite Cassel role by a mile is Bert Fischer in Rushmore. Bert may be faintly befuddled by his exceptional son Max (Jason Schwartzman), but he's unquestioningly supportive of everything he does. He may have some idea that Max is ashamed of his modest station in life, as a barber, but when a new acquaintance says he thought Max's father was a neurosurgeon, Bert cheerfully replies that he gets that a lot.

Cassel has also played an extraordinary number of gangsters. But we prefer to think of him playing nice men: confused old agents speeding along the streets of L.A. on Rascals, and old-school barbers who still oil their hair.