From Drive to The Prisoner: Our 5 Favorite Nameless On-Screen Characters

There are thousands of unnamed movie roles, usually belonging to minor characters or extras — “Extremely Ugly Girl” (played by a multi-role-juggling Arsenio Hall in Coming to America), or, if we’re sticking with ’80s movies, “Mouse Wrangler” in Scrooged.

Then, of course, there are the nameless main characters, the ones whose heroism only exists in the context of the film’s events. Take Driver, Ryan Gosling’s stuntman-turned-hired wheelman in Drive by way of an example. We’re sure Driver has a lot of qualities and interests — scrapbooking, the occasional fan video, collecting baseball cards — but his function as a Driver in the film is so essential to the plot that there’s no real need to know his real name. Plus, “Scrapbooker” just doesn’t have the same manly zing that “Driver” has.

There are other reasons for characters to remain anonymous: adding mystery to a character, or making the character a symbolic Everyman. Laziness might also be involved somehow.

Whatever the reason for not naming a character, we came up with five of our favorite unnamed roles from pop culture.

5. No. 6, The Prisoner

He’s not a number, he’s a free man. And still he lets people call him by his number and not his name (whatever it is).

4. T.B. Player, That Thing You Do!

Until researching for this story, we had never realized that Ethan Embry’s character never really had a name, even though we always referred to him as “the bass player” when talking about the film.

3. The Man With No Name, The Dollars Trilogy