[Blarg]

Lori Singer -- you can't feel sorry for Tim Hutton the way you're supposed to in The Falcon and The Snowman, because, hey -- Lori Singer is his girlfriend! She has the same effect in other movies.

Phoebe Cates similarly destroys scenes because you can't help spending all your time looking at her.

Harry Dean Stanton.

James Dean in "Giant" as mentioned above was a good one. He was more a movie stealer than a scene stealer though. Joe Pesci is a good one too; he's always fantastically watchable; you almost can't tear your eyes away from him.

DeNiro too. Even against Sam Jackson in Jackie Brown, you can't help constantly watching DeNiro, even though it's not all that colorful a role.

Bronson Pinchot in Beverly Hills Cop II.

Gloria Grahame, Michel Simon, Charles Durning.

Oh, I guess the most notorious example these days is that guy Simon from American Idol. He stole the scene so much he became a focus of the show and an industry unto himself.

And there's that black guy who did the dancing in those underwear commercials -- they were super popular a year or so ago, and he was getting interviewed on talk shows, and they made a couple more commercials just based on his kangaroo dance. Supposedly he was just supposed to walk around like a bunch of other people in the underwear, but he decided, what the hell, and just decided to clown it up and have fun. Then he cracked everyone up so much that all the other people were forgotten about, and the company made the commercial totally about him and his dance, and he went from nothing to famous overnight. That guy really knew exactly how to steal a scene and make the most of his chance.

Oh, and another classical one -- Steve McQueen. On the soundtrack of The Magnificent Seven, the commentary talks about how he was constantly fiddling and drawing attention to himself in a competitive way in every possible scene. Yul Brynner got extremely annoyed at the pesky youngster, and told him, "You know, if you're going to keep that up, all I have to do is take off my hat, and no one will even see you." Steve wised up and toned it down a little. But he was apparently a maniacal scene stealer. It's funny to watch him in that film knowing that. It's an ensemble crowd and Steve is always doing the equivalent of picking his nose or something to get attention on himself.