Robert Ryan was a great actor and superb but multi-layered tough guy. Like a lot of actors of that generation he had quite a interesting and diverse early life, ranch hand, successful amateur boxer, ship's stoker, drill instructor with the marines so not exactly a shrinking violet. His performance as the killer in Crossfire is masterly conveying his vileness and his increasing desperation and panic when he realises he has been caught out. A tall imposing figure who had no need to buff up in the manner of certain later so-callled toughies, in real life he stood up to McCarthy and held left-wing pacifist views yet as an an actor specialised in tough,complex and sometimes brutal men. A real tough guy on and off the screen.
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