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According to legend -- by which we mean, the internet -- Keith David's first dramatic role ever was as the Cowardly Lion in a grade-school production of The Wizard of Oz. Which is ironic, given that David probably never acted cowardly again the rest of his life.

David is a snarly mofo, and he proved his snarly bona fides early, as the tough-talking, snow-encrusted "Childs" in John Carpenter's The Thing and then, four years later, as the snarly-but-sympathetic soldier "King" in Platoon. Between those two gigs, he spent a few years as "Keith the Southwood Carpenter" on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in which we're guessing he was neither tough-talking nor snarly nor, for that matter, snow-encrusted.

(And he also starred with Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live! , a crappy John Carpenter film that only five of you out there will have seen, but those five will care enough about that they'll email to complain if we don't mention it. So consider it mentioned. And, yes, it was crappy.)

(Seriously, it was.)

David later went on to snarl in such films as Barbershop (as a gangsta), Volcano (as a cop), those Riddick movies (as an Imam named, er, Imam, who turns out to be untrustworthy) and Requiem for a Dream (as a bad person who, if memory serves, sold drugs and may have forced Jennifer Connelly to perform lascivious, degrading acts). He can soon be seen in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, presumably doing a fair bit of snarling, smiling, and a kind of shit-eating hybrid snarl-smile that he all but invented.

Sometimes David gets to play against type, as when he appeared as Cameron Diaz's stepfather in There's Something About Mary -- though even there, he was a wee bit snarly and intimidating -- at least, he was until he saw Ben Stiller's wing-ding all snaggled up in his zipper.

It's also important to note that he is not David Keith -- a mistake we imagine even he makes once in a while.

But even if you've only seen him a few times, it's easy to picture David's trademark gap-toothed grin -- which always seems to have a half-chewed cigar butt floating around in it somewhere. In fact, while at most births it's traditional for fathers to hand out cigars, we like to imagine that little baby Keith was born with a cigar already in his mouth -- a short, stubby, chewed-up cigar, wedged between his little baby gums. Then he pulled it out, spit, and told his dad to drop and give him twenty.