Lance Henriksen

Lance Henriksen has one of those weathered, granite-carved faces that looks like it survived three shipwrecks, a barroom brawl, and a brief tour of duty as an android on LV-426. From playing Bishop in Aliens to a seemingly endless parade of gritty lawmen, assassins, and hardboiled heavies, Henriksen earned his legendary cult status the old-fashioned way: by being ruggedly, undeniably cool.

His backstory reads like a 19th-century adventure novel. Born in New York City, Henriksen was the son of a Norwegian sailor father and a mother of Irish, English, and Native American descent. He dropped out of school early, spent time as a merchant marine, rode freight trains, and was essentially illiterate until he taught himself to read in his thirties using theatrical scripts. It is a wildly impressive American journey, but conspicuously lacking in bris ceremonies, bar mitzvahs, or pastrami on rye.

So while he managed to make an android look deeply human and brought gravitas to decades of genre cinema, there isn't a drop of tribal blood in his veins. We'd love to claim the guy who survived the Queen Alien, but Bishop belongs entirely to the gentiles (and Weyland-Yutani).