It’s safe to say Ron Perlman has solidified himself as an icon of pop culture through some seriously imposing roles. He’s played Slade in Teen Titans, The Lich in Adventure Time, Clay Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, and, of course, Hellboy. He’s also been a longtime collaborator of Guillermo del Toro, appearing in films including Cronos, Pacific Rim, and the Hellboy movies. But one of Perlman’s most surprising roles came long before Hellboy — on a fantasy series that also counted futureGame of Thrones author George R. R. Martin among its writers and producers.
Ron Perlman’s Fantasy Breakout Came Long Before ‘Hellboy’
One thing Perlman is known for is disappearing beneath heavy prosthetics. He did it in his film debut, the 1981 Jean-Jacques Annaud film Quest for Fire, in which he plays Amoukar in full Neanderthal makeup while speaking a made-up prehistoric language. He did it again in The Name of the Rose, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Star Trek: Nemesis, and, most famously, Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. But years before the latter made him a genre icon, Perlman spent three seasons under prosthetics for a very different fantasy role.
Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality Quiz Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To? Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell
Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie.
🐺Stark
🦁Lannister
🐉Targaryen
🦌Baratheon
🌹Tyrell
01
Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do? In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house.
02
What is the source of your power? Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours?
03
Who do you truly fight for? Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything.
04
How do you deal with your enemies? A house’s method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could.
05
What kind of ruler do you believe in? Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly.
06
You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond? How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory.
07
Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe? Every house has a philosophy. This is yours.
08
The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do? The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character.
The Maester Has Spoken Your House Is…
Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don’t. That’s very much up to you.
Winterfell · The North
🐺 House Stark
Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.
You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having.
Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn’t bend when things get difficult.
The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold.
You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are.
Casterly Rock · The Westerlands
🦁 House Lannister
You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.
You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage.
A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order.
You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway.
The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you.
Dragonstone · The Iron Throne
🐉 House Targaryen
You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.
You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality.
Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs.
The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible.
At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them.
Storm’s End · The Stormlands
🦌 House Baratheon
You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.
Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what’s behind it.
You value strength and straight dealing. You’d rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers.
The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after.
The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too.
Highgarden · The Reach
🌹 House Tyrell
You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.
Growing strong is your house’s motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts.
You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter.
The Tyrells fed King’s Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it.
You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is.
Long before Hellboy thrust Perlman into the spotlight of mainstream nerd culture, he had already found his breakout performance. His role in Beauty and the Beast earned him a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series in 1989, and Perlman wasn’t the only future fantasy icon involved. Years before A Game of Thrones was published, Martin was working behind the scenes on CBS’ Beauty and the Beast, making the 1987–1990 series an intriguing early chapter in both men’s careers.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Was a TV Cult Classic in an Era Full of Them
Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton as Vincent and Catherine in a publicity still for CBS’s Beauty and the Beast TV seriesImage via CBS
Beauty and the Beast ran on CBS from 1987 to 1990 and follows Linda Hamilton as sharp-witted DA Catherine, the Beauty of the story, and Perlman as Vincent, the soulful, timid beast-man who lives beneath New York City with a secret society of outcasts and misfits known as The World Below. Most of the show follows the struggle of a deep, literally telepathic relationship between two wildly different worlds, along with the recurring villains and issues of the week that come with it, before getting grittier toward the end.
George R. R. Martin was a writer and producer on the show years before A Game of Thrones was published. Martin joined Beauty and the Beast in 1987 and eventually rose through its producing ranks, making the series a notable part of his pre-Thrones television career — apparently, he went on to write a fantasy book or two of some significance. The series has since gained a cult following, and it’s easy to see why. While at its core it’s a fantasy series with heavy elements of mystery and thrills, there’s something about Beauty and the Beast that just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
That rests largely on Vincent and his interactions with everyone around him. It’s, for my money, Perlman’s most wholesome character, despite being a giant man with the characteristics of a lion and the strength to match. Jokes about resembling a Maine Coon aside, Perlman makes Vincent an unusually gentle romantic lead. He’s someone who deserves to be happy, who we want to succeed in love, and whose relationship with Catherine gives the series much of its emotional pull. Hellboy may be a big softy deep inside, but Vincent wears that softness much closer to the surface.
Ron Perlman Brings Back the True Moral of ‘Beauty and the Beast’
Image via CBS
Hellboy, Slade, The Lich, Clay Morrow — in one word: badass. This makes sense. When you’re on the taller side and have a voice like Perlman’s, you can easily be pigeonholed as a tough guy. And when you have the one-and-only Rick Baker doing your prosthetics, Vincent absolutely could’ve been another variation on that persona. After all, the brooding, rage-filled beast makes a common appearance when adapting the Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve story. That’s how they did the 2012 sort-of reboot of the show; in fact, Disney’s Beast a year later was meaner at the outset. It would’ve made perfect sense for Perlman to do the same thing, especially because he’s undeniably good at it.
The secret ingredient of Beauty and the Beast is that Vincent doesn’t become that character. He has a temper, absolutely, but it isn’t something love magically overcomes; it’s something he personally struggles with without losing his inherent gentleness. In both his animalistic appearance and his dramatic yet sensitive nature, Vincent is most similar to Jean Marais as the Beast in the 1946 Jean Cocteau film, which similarly understands that the core moral of the story is to love the flawed, or what society perceives as flawed. Beautifully, Vincent never changes into a prince, because he was one all along.
Sappy lines aside, Beauty and the Beast remains one of the most revealing performances of Perlman’s career. The imposing presence, unmistakable voice, and elaborate prosthetics are all there, but Vincent’s defining quality is his gentleness. Decades before Hellboy made Perlman a fantasy icon, this cult series proved just how much more he could do with the qualities audiences would eventually associate with his toughest characters.
