Top 10 Bearded Movie Characters

A lively debated erupted at Hayman Towers the other day. We were discussing our favourite movies; always a contentious subject as it is. But throw in the question of favourite bearded movie characters, and things soon escalate.

Several members of the team are still being treated for minor injuries, and one of our analysts is still recovering from surgery. It was one of the hairiest fights I’ve witnessed since the campaign started (pun intended).

Eventually we settled on our top 10 favourite bearded movie characters. It wasn’t an easy exercise, and once we had our top 10 we wisely avoided any attempt to rank them further.

So here they are, in no particular order: Hayman’s Beard’s Top 10 Favourite Bearded Movie Characters.

Jules Winnfield – Pulp Fiction
The very definition of cool, Jules used his beard to intimidate and enforce, much like Hayman himself. The difference of course is that the big man is the strong, silent type…although wouldn’t it be cool to hear “and I shall strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger” coming from the front row just before the ref yells “engage”?

Gandalf – The Lord of The Rings
Filmed locally of course, and that alone means that the beard power is pretty intense. You can go on about how it was the innocence of Frodo that made it possible to destroy the ring and defeat the bad guys, but they wouldn’t have gotten far without a kick-ass wizard with a huge white beard. In fact wizards without beards are probably illegal. And if they aren’t, they should be.

Pai Mei – Kill Bill
Speaking of huge white beards, you can’t go past the old Kung Fu master when it comes to harnessing the power of the beard. The guy takes out people’s eyes. With his beard. Ok, that might not be 100% accurate, but you can’t deny that he takes it past the Bruce Lee level with the help of that mighty chin decoration.

John Patrick Mason – The Rock
One of the most contentious choices was which Sean Connery character to include in the list. This is the man who sports a beard cause he likes it, not just because the character calls for it. The early running went with Henry Jones, Indiana’s father, but it was decided that he just didn’t kick enough ass. But as Mason in epic action flick The Rock, he takes out a platoon of rogue marines on Alcatraz, despite having been in prison for 30 years. And his beard at the start, before the trim, is outstanding.

King Leonidas – 300
It may not bee 100% accurate, but the beard factor in 300 more than makes up for it. When you consider that this guy actually existed, and actually had a beard (probably), it’s an impressive story. His passion and courage are echoed 2,500 years later in The Beard of Hayman and the rest of the All Blacks. We look forward to our scrum doing the same thing to the opposition as the Spartans did to the Persians.

Captain Jack Sparrow – Pirates of the Caribbean
We were threatened with all sorts of things by the women at Hayman Towers if we didn’t include Captain Jack. Their passion for his beard was immense, although we suspect we may have misunderstood their enthusiasm. Either way, he’s a great character, and his beard is certainly one of the most creative ones on our list.

Hans Gruber – Die Hard
Probably the coolest bad guy ever, Hans Gruber made Bruce Willis’s life hell in Nakatomi Tower. Oozing power and arrogance, his beard gave him the intelligence required to pull off a heist on a scale never seen before. In the original version he kills Bruce and takes off with the money alone, the only one of his team to survive. That was before Bruce demanded the ending be changed, resulting in the highly unlikely scenario of the clean shaven hero beating the bearded villain.
Pffft, as if.

Jack Torrance – The Shining
What a psycho. It’s always tragic when a beard is used for evil, as it does make things hard for the good guys. In this case though it does provide us with a classic performance, with the insanity amplified by the hairy growth sported by Jack.

Obi Wan Kenobi - Star Wars (both of them)
Alec Guinness gives a faultlessly hairy performance in the original film as Obi Wan Kenobi, one of the few Jedi to survive the slaughter by the Sith. And how did he survive? Cause he had a beard. When George Lucas decided to prove those who said he couldn’t write dialogue right by making the prequels, Ewen McGregor stepped into the young Kenobi’s robes, and by the third film, was sporting a wonderful chin-warmer that gave him a certain air of authority, and no doubt made his Jedi vow of celibacy much harder to keep.

Clubber Lang – Rocky II
What more can we say?