Richard Petty
Richard Petty is an actor, born 1937.
The screen career is four titles long. The other one is enormous. Richard Petty, nicknamed the King, drove in NASCAR's Grand National and Winston Cup Series from 1958 to 1992, mostly in the No. 43 Plymouth and Pontiac for the family team, Petty Enterprises. He was the first driver to take seven Cup Series championships, won a record 200 races, took the Daytona 500 seven times, and won 27 races in a single season in 1967. Those numbers are why he is on this site at all.
Hollywood used him the only way it sensibly could. He appears as himself in the 1968 racing picture Speedway and again in the 2008 comedy Swing Vote, and then the Cars films built a character around him: The King, voiced by Petty, is a veteran racer carrying his own nickname. The casting is a joke that only works because the audience already knows the record, and it is unusually well judged, since the film asks him to play a champion near the end of a career rather than a triumphant one.
He returned to the role for Cars 3 in 2017. That is the whole filmography, and it is fine that it is: the real work happened on the track, and the screen credits are a victory lap.
Movies (4)
Where to start with Richard Petty
Most people under thirty met him in Cars, and it is the only credit on this list with any real acting in it. Petty voices The King, and there is something quietly moving about a seven-time champion playing a racer being told his time is up.
Cars 3 brings him back in a smaller capacity, and it is the better film of the two on the subject of ageing, so watch it second rather than skipping it.
The live-action credits are curiosities. Speedway is a 1968 racing picture with him appearing as himself, shot the year after the season in which he won 27 races. Swing Vote is a political comedy that wheels him on for name recognition, and it works exactly as well as that sounds.