Yaphet Kotto’s presence in a movie wasn’t a guarantee that it would be a masterpiece—though he was a crucial contributor to a few of them—but it did guarantee that the movie would be at least pretty good as long as Kotto was onscreen. Described by Pauline Kael as a “solid, great actor” and a “quietly beautiful” presence, Kotto, born in New York City in 1939, brought an inherent lived-in gravity to every part he played, whether Bond villain (Live and Let Die), working-class spaceship engineer (Alien), or harried FBI agent (Midnight Run). Kotto’s retirement from acting some years before his death in 2021 was a loss to cinema—but as you can see in this edition of Also Starring, he definitely didn’t have anything left to prove.