Michael Biehn’s 10 Coolest Movie Roles, Ranked

Michael Biehn is a familiar face in the annals of sci-fi and action movie history. He’s popped up in some of the greatest classics ever to have graced the silver screen, and although he was never considered an A-lister, there no denying the impact he made on a number of successful franchises.

Biehn’s movie and TV roles are quite varied despite his penchant for playing military types. A frequent James Cameron collaborator, he made a huge name for himself in the 1980s, but his career didn’t stop there. He’s still going strong with a recent appearance in season 2 of The Mandalorian. Here are 10 of his coolest movie roles, ranked.

10 Eddy Kay / Timebomb (1991)

Michael Biehn starred in this 1990 action thriller as Eddy Kay, a seemingly normal watchmaker who survives a murder that ends up triggering a series of vivid nightmares. He consults a psychiatrist for help in making sense of the event as he tries to decipher whether it’s a side effect of the trauma, or something deeper.

He eventually learns that he was part of a top-secret government program designed to create an army of assassins, but now he has become the mark. It’s one part Total Recall and one part Bourne Identity where Biehn was able to play dual roles that converge into something quite different near the end.

9 Joe Donan / Deadfall (1993)

Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew Christopher directed this 1993 crime film starring Biehn as Joe Donan, a con artist who accidentally kills his own father. Riddled with guilt, he sets out to recover a cache of valuables stolen from his father’s twin brother Lou, but he soon learns that he’s up against another con artist of equal skill.

The film is renowned for its star-studded cast including Nicholas Cage, James Coburn, and Charlie Sheen, but Biehn is clearly in the driver’s seat as the linchpin that holds it all together. Though critically panned, it somehow sparked a sequel decades later entitled Arsenal, with Nicholas Cage reprising one of his worst acting roles.

8 Robert Bly / The Art Of War (2000)

Biehn went full villain for this underrated action classic starring Wesley Snipes as Neil Shaw, a U.N. covert ops specialist who witnesses the murder of the Chinese ambassador at a dinner celebration. Framed for the murder, he must evade the FBI and the Triad to piece together what went wrong, and who was responsible.

Spoilers ahead – Biehn’s character Robert Bly manages to out himself as the culprit, and the two engage in a Matrix-inspired gun battle that helps add a little extra dose of cool factor onto an otherwise straightforward, but enjoyable action flick.

7 Commander Anderson / The Rock (1996)

By the time 1996 had rolled around, Michael Biehn had played a plethora of Navy SEAL types, which meant stepping into his role as Commander Anderson in Michael Bay’s The Rock shouldn’t have been too hard. Though he doesn’t last the entire length of the film, Biehn does bring a commanding and recognizable presence to the film as a straight-laced good guy standing in direct opposition to the misguided antagonists threatening to unleash a catastrophe.

Ironically, for all of Biehn’s experience playing military men, he openly admitted that he felt intimidated as the only actor working on set with actual Navy SEALS. That’s to be expected for someone who didn’t go through the full training.

6 Johnny Ringo / Tombstone (1993)

Biehn played outlaw Johnny Ringo in this classic 90s western with an all-star cast including Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. It also gave him an opportunity to share the screen once more with fellow Aliens co-star Bill Paxton – one of several times.

His portrayal of the hot-shot Ringo came with all the fixings, including some truly fanciful pistol work that sold his character as quite a badass. Unfortunately, Ringo’s character would check out unceremoniously in a match-up with fast-gun Doc Holliday later on, but Biehn went out on a high note, nonetheless.

5 Lieutenant James Curran / Navy SEALS (1990)

Biehn re-teamed with two of his co-stars (Bill Paxton and Charlie Sheen) for 1990’s Navy SEALS where he played experienced vet James Curran, the leader of a tough-as-nails SEALS team sent to wipe out an international arms terrorist.

Though it was largely a Charlie Sheen film, Biehn was clearly the voice of authority in one of his coolest roles. Not only did he bring all the movie combat experience he’d gained in previous films throughout the 80s, but he set himself up for bigger hits down the road, including 1996’s The Rock.

4 Lieutenant Coffy / The Abyss (1989)

This underrated James Cameron classic cast Biehn in a very different kind of military role. He’d already played unstable psychopaths before, such as his stint in 1981’s The Fan, and he was able to fuse that role with his military typecast to create Lieutenant Coffy.

This character was a straight-laced military man obsessed with the Cold War and all of the paranoia circling tensions at the time. When Coffy comes face-to-face with an extraterrestrial power thousands of feet underwater, he goes ballistic and threatens to destroy it, thereby setting off a possible war between two species.

3 Douglas Breen / The Fan (1981)

Biehn had barely made a name for himself in the movie world by the time 1981 had come around, but he scored an underrated hit as unstable psychopath Douglas Breen in The Fan. This role allowed him to flex his villain muscles a bit, which was easy given how effortlessly he tends to play his mentally unstable characters.

The film gave Biehn the opportunity to star alongside the likes of Lauren Bacall, Hector Elizondo, and James Garner, but he stole the show as Douglas Breen with little effort. It’s a wonder why he didn’t get more non-action movie hero roles.

2 Kyle Reese / The Terminator (1984)

Michael Biehn became a household name in 1984 when he starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in James Cameron’s groundbreaking (yet imperfect) mega-hit The Terminator. Not only was it a successful film, but it laid the foundation for one of Hollywood’s most popular action movie franchises.

Biehn played Kyle Reese, a future soldier sent back through time to protect the mother of humanity’s resistance leader from a homicidal cyborg assassin. Biehn had to play a sensitive lover, a traumatized war vet, and an action movie superhero all in the same role, and he pulled it off with perfection.

1 Corporal Hicks / Aliens (1986)

As with directors like Christopher Nolan, super-director James Cameron loves to cast familiar faces in his movies, and he chose Michael Biehn to play Corporal Hicks in the iconic and highly quotable sci-fi horror sequel Aliens. Biehn played a more understated role this time ’round – a straight-laced military man with a cool demeanor who ended up making it out with his life at the end.

Granted, Biehn was not Cameron’s first choice. Actor James Remar was initially cast but was let go due to alleged substance abuse problems on set. Biehn received a phone call over the weekend offering him the role, which he immediately took, and was on a plane a few days later. He managed to slip into a filming schedule that had already started without having to go through the rigorous combat training that the rest of the cast was forced to endure.

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