Joseph Cotten

Joseph Cotten is one of those actors I keep coming back to precisely because he never felt like he was performing — he just inhabited his characters with an easy, southern-gentleman grace that made everyone around him look like they were working too hard. The Orson Welles years alone would be enough to cement any legacy: he was the moral compass in Citizen Kane, the doomed heir in The Magnificent Ambersons, and then — unforgettably — the naive foil to Welles's Harry Lime in The Third Man, holding the whole film together while the real villain charmed everyone else. What I love about Cotten is that he never overshadowed the room, yet the room always felt emptier without him. A tall, handsome Virginia gentleman who made restraint look like power.

Name (English)

Joseph Cotten

Name (Japanese)

ジョゼフ・コットン

Reading

じょぜふ・こっとん

Born

May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Snake

Origin

Petersburg, Virginia, United States

Height

188 cm

Occupation

film actor / writer / autobiographer / stage actor / television actor

Awards & achievements

• star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Volpi Cup for Best Actor

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%82%BC%E3%83%95%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B3%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%83%B3

Tags

• Virginia
• film actor
• writer
• autobiographer

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.