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What are the characteristics of movie tough guys and how do they attain these qualities as actors? It's an interesting question, one that would make a good foundation for a thesis, but it's one that I don't have definitive answers for, particularly the latter, just some observations that I can share from a very small sample size.

Tough guys tend to combine real-life grit, which leads to a later question, with an understated physical presence and sound emotional control. There's a controlled energy about them, unlike their opponents, who are usually brash, egotistical and aggressive. When tough guys spring into action it is usually sharp, on point and with a clear purpose.

They are stoic, don't talk much, and, when they do, their words are chosen carefully. On the other hand, the bad guys tend to brag and loudly elaborate about their intentions. This last bit is probably best illustrated by a line from Eli Wallach's "Tuco" in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966); "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." He says this as he guns down a bounty hunter who is midway through a monologue, as if to showcase that actions are of more value than empty words.

There also seems to be a moral code amongst movie tough guys in that they are likely to engage in protecting the weak and the vulnerable. One of the best examples of this is Jean Reno's "Leon" in "Leon: The Professional" (1996), where he plays a hit man who takes in a 12 year old girl after her family has been murdered by a corrupt DEA officer. The there's Viggo Mortensen's "Man" in "The Road" (2009) who knows that he's dying but uses every ounce of energy to protect his son and teach him how to survive when he ultimately meets his fate.

As mentioned earlier, there's usually some real life grit within these characters and it begs the question; did the actor's upbringing and environment provide them with a well of resources on which to draw upon to instill a similar seed within their characters? Certainly there is a chance that the environment played a part and, I must stress, that the following merely represents my observations from a very small sample size and, in no way should it be seen as a theory.

Of the dozen actors listed above, eleven of them found their way into the armed forces. The sole exception here is James Cagney. Humphrey Bogart enlisted in the army in 1918 and then joined the Coastal Picket Force during World War II. Burt Lancaster (1943) and Robert Mitchum (1945) were also in the army. Michael Caine was drafted into Great Britain's National Service and saw active service in Korea, and both Jean-Paul Belmondo and Sidney Poitier lied about their ages to find their way into the army at the age of sixteen. Lee Marvin was a scout sniper in the 4th Marine Division and was a participant in numerous assaults, including Mt. Tapochau during the Battle of Saipan (1944), where machine gun fire severed his sciatic nerve. Gene Hackman joined the Marines in 1946, Charles Bronson was drawn into the Air Force in 1943, and Kirk Douglas and Alain Delon were in their nation's respective navies during World War II.

Charles Bronson, James Cagney and Kirk Douglas were raised in crippling poverty. Bronson wound up working in coal mines from an early age, while Douglas also had to deal with constant beatings from an abusive and alcoholic father. Cagney would work a variety of lowly jobs and hand over his money to the family in an effort to get by. Michael Caine was raised in a crowded flat and moved into a pre-fabricated house during the Blitz while Sidney Poitier was also raised in poverty on Cat Island in the Bahamas. The anti-thesis to these was Alain Delon who was raised in wealth, but rebelled against it. He became an unruly student who was constantly fighting and was expelled from school on a regular basis. After his stint in the navy he made his home, before acting, in the French underground and had no qualms in finding shelter under the roofs of sympathetic prostitutes.

Then there were the troublemakers. Delon has already been chronicled above, but Lee Marvin was constantly skipping school to go hunting, Bogart, apparently, had a history of drinking, smoking, and fighting before finally being expelled from high school for launching the headmaster into a pond. Cagney developed a reputation as a very good street fighter before focusing that energy into boxing to finish runner up for the New York State Lightweight title. Mitchum, who'd left home at the age of fourteen, was another who was regularly embroiled in fighting, and would eventually become a professional boxer with 27 fights to his name. Douglas was a gifted wrestler in high school and Belmondo had a short-lived career as an amateur boxer. If athletic prowess was an ingredient in the toughness stakes then Lancaster was the master, gaining a sporting scholarship to New York University on the strength of his basketball and gymnastic skills. He also had a short career as an acrobat in the circus.

On screen, many raise Bogart's performance as Duke Mantee, a desperate killer trapped in a diner, in "The Petrified Forest" (1936) as his breakout performance, but it was his ability to inject a level of complexity into the outlaw Roy "Mad Dog" Earle in "High Sierra" (1941), that had audiences sympathizing with a criminal and Hollywood directors paying attention. His performances as, first, the uncompromising private investigator coolly navigating his way through a series of double-crosses as Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) and then as the world weary, but sharp witted Philip Marlowe in "The Big Sleep" (1946), set the standard for the way future actors should portray detectives.

When James Cagney, as Tom Powers in "The Public Enemy" (1931), shoved a grapefruit into his girlfriend's face, it not only made him a massive star, it typecast him into a legion of gangster roles and saw him redefine the genre. He would follow that tough guy role with those of the doomed gangster Rocky Sullivan in "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1936), the World War I veteran Eddie Bartlett who rises to be a bootleg era crime lord in "The Roaring Twenties" (1939) and the incomparable, mother-obsessed gang leader Cody Jarrett in "White Heat" (1949)... "Top of the world, Ma!"

There was an authenticity to Lee Marvin's cinematic tough guys that was aided by his gravelly voice and towering presence. There was precision in his vicious snarling outlaw Liberty Valance, opposite John Wayne and James Stewart, in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) that turned into ruthless calculation when he played the professional hit man Charlie Strom in "The Killers" (1964). He was relentless as the bruised anti-hero Walker, blinkered toward revenge in "Point Blank" (1967) before becoming the no-nonsense Major John Reisman, on a suicide mission, in "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), possibly his most definitive tough guy role.

The granite featured Charles Bronson spent most of his early career in memorable support roles. There was the gun for hire Bernardo O'Reilly in "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), a rugged gunman who shows his tender side in befriending a group of children. He followed that with a gritty performance as Danny Velinski, a claustrophobic tunnel digger in "The Great Escape" (1964) and the mysterious harmonica-playing gunslinger with a piercing stare, that was almost as lethal as his six shooter, in "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968). His first lead, and defining, role was that of the mild-mannered architect Paul Kersey, who turns into a relentless urban vigilante in "Death Wish" in 1974. This would set the tone for a number of future roles in which he portrays a silent avenger.

Burt Lancaster had the ability to combine a brooding vulnerability with intense power in his tough guy roles. His breakout role was that "The Swede", a punch-drunk former boxer caught up in a doomed heist in "The Killers" (1946). In "Brute Force" (1947), he's Joe Collins, a hardened prisoner, leading a jail break against a sadistic guard, before becoming First Sergeant Milton Warden, who is a tough and dedicated military man, a veneer that covers a deeply complex individual in "From Here to Eternity" (1953). Whilst not a true tough guy role, Lancaster delivers one of his most memorable performances as Don Stroud in "The Birdman of Alcatraz" in 1962. Here he turns Stroud from a violent murderer into an intelligent, gentle self-taught ornithologist.

In 1986, in the film "Tough Guys", Lancaster is Harry Doyle and his long-time friend Kirk Douglas is Archie Long, two aging bank robbers who have just completed their 30 year sentence and find themselves struggling to adjust to a world that has passed them by. To relieve their boredom, they look to pull off one last job. Douglas brought an intensity to his tough guy roles that ranged from the unprincipled boxer Midge Kelly, in "Champion" (1949) who won't let anyone stand between him and success to the physical resilience he brings to the rebellious leader "Spartacus" (1960). In between he was the savage one-eyed warrior Einar in "The Vikings" (1958) and he brought a cold elegance to the destructive grit that defined the dying Doc Holliday in "The Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957).

Long before he played the corrupt, iron-fisted sheriff Little Bill Daggett in "Unforgiven" (1992), Gene Hackman was imbuing his anti-heroes and villains with raw grit and complex vulnerability. His break-out role was that of the boisterous older brother to Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), Buck in 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde", but he soon found himself face to face in a tough guy showdown with the flintiest actor in Hollywood, Lee Marvin, in the underrated crime thriller "Prime Cut" (1972). However, the role that would define him in his early years was that of the relentless, crude, and ferocious NYPD narcotics detective, Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in "The French Connection" (1972)

Robert Mitchum presented his characters with a sleepy-eyed demeanor that managed to hide a deep menace that was comfortably stoked with quiet confidence and some dangerous unpredictability. In 1947's "Out of the Past" he played the world weary private detective Jeff Bailey with an understated cool and stoic grit. As the counterfeit preacher Harry Powell in "Night of the Hunter" (1955) he has the words LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers and stalks two children with a menace that seems to go beyond being chilling. If that was the apprenticeship, then the artisan arose seven years later as a pure monster in the shape of the sadistic convict Max Cady, who terrorizes his former lawyer in "Cape Fear" (1962).

The role of Jack Carter in "Get Carter" (1971) is, possibly, Michael Caine's best tough guy role. He is a cold and brutal enforcer who makes the journey from London to Newcastle, seeking vengeance for the death of his brother. His apprenticeship into that role came six years earlier as the cynical and lethal intelligence agent Harry Palmer in "The Ipcress File" (1965). Unlike the flashier spies, such as Derek Flint (James Coburn), James Bond (Sean Connery) and Matt Helm (Dean Martin), that dominated the screens at the time, Caine's Palmer relied on quiet resilience and a sharp wit to get the job done efficiently. Caine proved that age did not weary his tough guy credentials, turning out in 2009, at the age of 76, and producing calculated raw fury to the role of "Harry Brown", an elderly ex-marine bringing vengeful justice on a group of young thugs.

Matt Damon's execution of the quiet efficiency of his character Tom Ripley in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999) was a great piece of work but it pales a little alongside Alain Delon's charismatic delivery of the same narcissistic sociopath in "Purple Noon" (1960), in which his chilling ruthlessness becomes a work of art. He would move on to set the standard for portraying cool, yet silently dangerous criminals. In 1967 he would become Jef Costello in "Le Samourai", a trench coat clad, disciplined hit man, who lives by a strong code of silence. Three years later he is the stoic ex-con Corey in "Le Cercle Rouge" (1970), then teams up with Jean-Paul Belmondo as two, sharply dressed 1930s gangsters, violently slicing their way through the French underground in "Borsalino" (1970).

In drawing inspiration from Humphrey Bogart for his portrayal of the arrogant, fast-talking car thief Michel Poiccard in "Breathless" (1960), Jean-Paul Belmondo managed to imbue his petty criminal with swagger and an effortless charm. Here he found a way to make crime look sexy, a trait that he would carry through to a number of his future roles. Two years later, in Jean-Pierre Melville's quintessential neo-noir crime thriller "Le Doulos" (1962), he plays Sillen, an ice-cold underworld thug whose loyalties could not be relied upon. In 1971 he instills a cheeky charm and high energy to the master thief Azad in "The Burglars" and follows that up as the relentless, hard-boiled police inspector Jean Letellier in the high octane thriller "Fear Over the City" (1975).

Sidney Poitier made a name for himself playing dignified and highly principled characters such as Homer Smith in "Lilies of the Field" (1963) and Dr. John Prentice in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), however, when it came to playing fierce and uncompromising characters he showed that he too possessed a distinct edge. In 1955 he was the rebellious, defiant inner-city youth in "Blackboard Jungle", which he followed up with Noah Cullen, a hardened convict, in "The Defiant Ones" (1958). Attempting an escape while shackled to Tony Curtis' "Joker" Jackson, an extreme racist, he matches his reluctant partner blow for blow. His crowning tough guy, though, was Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs in "In the Heat of the Night" (1967). Investigating a murder in a racist Mississippi town site, he refuses to be intimidated, famously slapping a white landowner during an interrogation. It marked the first time in US cinema that a black person struck a white without punishment. When Police Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), rankled at being outsmarted by a black man he mockingly asks Tibbs what he is called back in Philadelphia. Instead of shrinking back, as was the norm, Tibbs asserts his authority and demands dignity by declaring "They call me Mr. Tibbs!" That statement became the title of a sequel to the film in 1970, which was followed by "The Organization" in 1971.

Footnote: As I had used them in the narrative to create flow, I need to make mention of three films that did not sit comfortably for me in the interesting information. Henry Fonda plays the title character in "Mr. Roberts" (1955), where he endeavors to maintain the morale of the crew of the USS Reluctant, but is stymied in his efforts by James Cagney's tyrannical if, somewhat, unhinged Captain Morton. "The Gypsy Moths" (1969) serves to link Burt Lancaster, who plays an aging star of a daredevil parachute troupe, with Gene Hackman, the business minded Joe Browdy and the realist in the team. In "Zulu" (1964) Michael Caine's Lt. Bromhead helps defend a remote mission station at Rorke's Drift against a massive force of Zulu warriors. Caine's character grows from being a snobbish fop into a battle-hardened survivor. It was the film that would place Caine on the road to international stardom.