Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan · CC BY 2.0

Lang built a stage career first, earning a Tony nomination for The Speed of Darkness and later co-leading the Actors Studio, before becoming, in his late fifties, the face of one of film's biggest franchises as Colonel Miles Quaritch in James Cameron's Avatar. He had already built a durable character-actor résumé across Gettysburg, Tombstone, and Manhunter, and continued working steadily in both mediums alongside the Avatar sequels.