Ray Cooper
Ray Cooper's day job does not happen on a screen. He is an English percussionist who has spent his career as a session player and a touring musician, and the list of people he has worked with reads like a survey of the form: Elton John, Harry Nilsson, Billy Joel, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Art Garfunkel. He has pointed to the drummers he grew up on, Ginger Baker, Carmine Appice and John Bonham, as the influence that shaped him.
The film credits are a sideline, and a very specific one. He appears in three Terry Gilliam pictures: a technician in Brazil, a functionary in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Vladimir in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Add a preacher in Robert Altman's Popeye and, as himself with the Singing Rebels' Band, a turn in Water. Percussion is the most theatrical job on any stage, all standing and swinging and arms above the head, so a director looking for a memorable face in a crowd could do considerably worse.
Movies (5)
Where to start with Ray Cooper
There is no lead performance to route you toward here, so choose by the film. Brazil is the best of them by a wide margin, and being a face in a Gilliam crowd counts for something in a film where the crowds are half the design.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus complete the Gilliam set, the first an enormous and exhausting fantasy, the second his loosest late film, with Cooper as Vladimir. Popeye is Altman building a live-action cartoon and losing the argument with it, though it is far more interesting than its reputation allows. Water has him playing himself in a band, the only credit here that matches the actual job. For the body of work, look at the records he played on rather than the films he stood in.