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Brian Dennehy isn't the quintessential Hey! It's That Guy!. There are others who've played more roles, been more frequently or consistently employed; actors whose features are more freakishly distinctive or, conversely, more bland, and thus more widely applicable.

Dennehy has a jillion film credits, true, but not one iconic role, the way, say, Paul Gleason did after The Breakfast Club. Dennehy even went through a brief period of leading-man mini-stardom in the '80s, and later won wide acclaim for a TV production of Death Of A Salesman, in which he played the lead. And, finally, he fails the last, best test of H!ITG!dom: I would bet, if pressed and shown a photo, my parents could remember his name.

And yet, for me, Dennehy will always be not only a welcome screen presence (more hard-living, vivacious uncle than comforting father), but also the Ur-H!ITG!. (Or UH!ITG!) That's because he is, literally, the first actor I can remember seeing in a film and thinking, well...you know.

Which film? Hard to tell. I know it was the mid-'80s, when I was a wee tot in short pants. F/X seems the most likely candidate, though by definition I must have seen him in several other things prior to that, or else I wouldn't have recognized him. (Duh.) I was a little too young for Semi-Tough, Foul Play, or Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Maybe Cocoon? Or First Blood? Yeah, it must have been First Blood, in which he played the grizzly sheriff who draws first blood, man! He draws first blood! (He also gives Sylvester Stallone a shower with a fire hose. Damned long-hairs.)

But I know that by the time Dennehy played the novelist opposite James Woods in Best Seller, I was hooked. Not just on Dennehy, but on the concept that there were actors -- good, worthy actors -- who were large of girth and booming of voice and who weren't likely to show up on the cover of a romance novel, but were likely to be the best thing in any movie they were in.

Dennehy's like that.

Dennehy seems to have slowed down of late, or maybe he's just in lots of stuff I've only vaguely heard of but never watch, like the new movie 10th & Wolf, or that show The 4400. (Great title. Can you imagine the pitch meeting? "It's The 4400. No, not 400. The forty-four-hundred. Why? Well, its about 4400 people. No, not forty-four. Forty-four hundred.")

Anyway, I could detail here for you what kind of characters he plays (big guys, sheriffs...uh, big sheriffs), but if you don't already know who Brian Dennehy is, then this whole concept is no doubt lost on you. Besides, this is a tribute, not an introduction, junior. For that, rent First Blood. (It holds up.)

Instead, I'll take this opportunity to point out that a young Dennehy once played Buford Pusser on a TV version of Walking Tall, renamed A Real American Hero. Pusser, of course, was originally played by H!ITG! royalty, Joe Don Baker. So it's like Dennehy's in some sort of regal bloodline of H!ITG!s. (Buford Pusser was also played by Bo Svenson on several occasions. He's not in any sort of regal bloodline that we know of.)