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It’s safe to say that Ron Perlman has solidified himself as an icon of pop culture, through his iconic roles and his public persona outside of them. He’s played some of the most badass characters on film and television, including but not limited to Slade in Teen Titans, The Lich in Adventure Time, Clay Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, and of course his most outstanding role, Mr. Lancer in Danny Phantom… oh, right, also Hellboy. He’s been a long-time collaborator of the legendary Guillermo Del Toro since his directorial debut in Cronos, but he’s also the kind of actor who will be a guaranteed standout in any film, no matter the overall quality, a true mark of a great performer. He’s had his hand in everything — film, television, voice-acting, video games, even doing some stage work up until 1996, and no one would complain if he came back to it.
One thing Perlman is known for, among many others, is playing character roles under heavy prosthetics. This can be seen in his film debut, in the 1981 Jean-Jacques Annaud film Quest For Fire, an incredibly unique film set in, of all places, Paleolithic Europe. It follows early man in its discovery of fire, and in it Perlman plays Amoukar, in full Neanderthal makeup, speaking a made-up prehistoric language. He did it again on film in another Annaud film, The Name of the Rose, the truly unexplainable adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau, Star Trek: Nemesis, and of course, Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. There are a few reasons why he excels in these roles — his incredible work in animation and videogames, an iconic voice with a lot of applications, the incomprehensible patience it takes to sit in the makeup chair for hours on end every day on set, and just one of those faces that is recognizable everywhere. It just works for him, and he seems to find it a very fulfilling and meaningful experience so more power to him. He’s known for doing this on film, but more importantly, for this article, he put on the prosthetics for three seasons, three years, of a television show.
Because of his very vocal support of the current and ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes going on at the moment, it seems like a perfect time to bring up a career best for him. We all know Hellboy and how iconic a performance that was, and how that thrust him into the spotlight of mainstream nerd culture. However, that wasn’t Perlman’s breakout performance, nor was it the one to snag him his first trophy, that being a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series in 1989. This writer has been waiting on tenterhooks to write about her favorite television show ever (which comes as no surprise to those who know her) and the powers-that-be on Collider have decided it’s time to talk about the 1987-1990 fantasy/drama series Beauty and the Beast.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Was a TV Cult Classic in an Era Full of Them
Beauty and the Beast ran on CBS from 1987-1990, it follows Linda Hamilton, yep, Sarah Connor, as sharp-witted DA Catherine, the Beauty of the story, and Perlman as Vincent, the soulful, timid beast-man who lives beneath New York City with a secret society of outcasts and misfits known as The World Below. Most of the show follows the struggle of a deep, literally telepathic relationship between two wildly different worlds, and the recurring villains and issues of the week that come with it, before getting grittier and kind of falling off at the end there. The fun fact some of you may know is that George R. R. Martin was a writer and producer for the show — apparently, he went on to write a fantasy book or two of some significance. It has gained quite the cult following, and it’s easy to see why; while, at its core it’s a fantasy-drama with heavy elements of mystery and thrills, there’s something about Beauty and the Beast that just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
That rests a lot on Vincent, and his interactions with everyone around him. It’s for my money Perlman’s most wholesome character, despite being a giant man with the characteristics of a lion with the strength to match. Jokes about resembling a Maine Coon aside, Perlman as Vincent is the romantic lead we all need and deserve. With some super toxic dynamics being clumsily shown on primetime at the moment, it’s nice to have someone who deserves to be happy, who we want to succeed in love, and someone who our heart breaks for, and that’s what we’re given here. Vincent’s relationship with Catherine, but also his interactions with almost everyone else in the series, is cavity-inducing. He’s baby, as they say, a cinnamon roll too good for this world, as they used to say. The first and most deeply unironic example of a Golden Retriever boyfriend, except more soulful and also a lion. Hellboy is really a big softy deep inside, but Vincent? He’s just a big softy. This may come as strange if you’re first hearing the words “Ron Perlman in Beauty and the Beast.”
Ron Perlman Brings Back the True Moral of ‘Beauty and the Beast’
Let’s go back to those performances mentioned previously in the article and summarize them. Hellboy, Slade, The Lich, Clay Morrow, in one word: Badass. This makes sense. When you’re on the taller side, and when you have a voice like that, you end up being pigeonholed as a tough guy — and when you have the one-and-only Rick Baker doing your prosthetics, this role absolutely could’ve had a similar angle. After all, the brooding, rage-filled beast makes a common appearance when adapting the Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve story. That’s how they did the 2012 kind-of-sort-of reboot of the show; in fact, Disney’s Beast a year later was meaner at the outset. So it would make perfect sense for Perlman to be put to the task of doing the exact same thing, especially because he’s undeniably good at it.
The secret ingredient of Beauty and the Beast involved that not happening, which is why when Vincent is forced into that role in the third season, it was also the show’s last. Vincent had a temper, absolutely, but it wasn’t something love magically overcomes; it was something he personally struggles with, something he got into deep melodramatics over, but it didn’t take away from his inherent gentleness. In both animalistic similarities, and in dramatic yet sensitive and wholesome vibe, Vincent is most similar to Jean Marais as the Beast in the 1946 Jean Cocteau film — because of the understanding that the core moral of the story is to love the flawed, or what society perceives as such. Beautifully, Vincent never changes into a prince, because he was one all along.
Sappy lines aside, this performance, but really all performances by Perlman, especially in strange little relics like this show, exhibits the importance of great character actors like him. The history of the moving image is built on the actors who tell the stories and the writers who create them, and without them, we wouldn’t have great characters like Beauty and the Beast‘s Vincent, so they should be actually paid what they’re worth.
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