Onscreen for just shy of eight minutes, Davis appears in a single scene as Mrs. Miller, the mother of a Catholic school's first Black student, Donald Miller.
In her scene, Mrs. Miller meets with the school's principal, Sister Aloysius Beauvier, who suspects that Donald is being abused by the new priest in the parish. Sister Beauvier is played by Meryl Streep.
Viola Davis was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Doubt.
Fans were shocked when they discovered that Zendaya, who has been heavily promoted as a main character in Dune, was only onscreen for seven minutes, "or 4.5% of the film."
However, Chani, a Fremen, or native to the desert planet Arrakis, is an essential character; she just so happens to be introduced more than halfway into the source material. Zendaya will be way more prominent in Dune's (recently confirmed) sequel, which will cover the latter half of the novel of the same name.
3.Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Judi Dench's royal performance clocks in at around eight minutes, and she doesn't waste a single second of it.
When Dench accepted the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance, she joked in her acceptance speech, "I feel for eight minutes on the screen, I should only get a little bit of him."
Nevertheless, they let her bring home the whole statue.
4.Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Englund and director Wes Craven were downright efficient when it came to making Freddy Krueger one of the most recognizable horror movie villains ever.
Krueger is only onscreen for roughly seven minutes, but with every second he proves that you just don't need all that much time to give nightmares to an entire generation.
5.Jonathan Groff as King George III in Hamilton (Disney+ recording, 2020)
With only three brief musical numbers that take up less than eight minutes, Groff establishes King George III as a manchild who doesn't let his buffoonery get in the way of his desire to crush any resistance to his rule.
His fondness for threats of violence doesn't make him any less fun to watch, and once America wins the Revolutionary War, he settles into the role of jilted ex perfectly. Naturally, Jonathan Groff was nominated for an Emmy for his performance in the recorded Disney+ version.
Here's one of Groff's musical numbers as King George III:
6.Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher in Network (1976)
Straight's performance as a woman who is cheated on by her husband took only three days to film, and resulted in three scenes that lasted a touch under six minutes.
8.Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Baldwin only appears in a single scene, during which he repeats, over and over again, the line "Always be closing." The scene lasts a little over eight minutes.
Apparently, David Mamet added Baldwin's scene to the movie, which was an adaptation of his play, because the producers at New Line Cinema wanted an "explosion" with which to start the story.
9.Billy Crystal and Carol Kane as Miracle Max and Valerie in The Princess Bride (1987)
This dynamic duo only get around five minutes of screentime, but Crystal was apparently so funny during his three days on set that he kept making cast and crew members burst out in laughter.
In Cary Elwes' memoir As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride, he wrote, "For three days straight and ten hours a day, Billy improvised thirteenth-century period jokes, never saying the same thing or the same line twice."
11.Bill Murray as Bill Murray in Zombieland (2009)
In a brief cameo appearance, Bill Murray plays critically acclaimed and beloved actor Bill Murray, who disguises himself as a zombie during the apocalypse in order to live his life unbothered by the undead.
Which works just fine, until Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) accidentally shoots him.
12.Ruby Dee as Mama Lucas in American Gangster (2007)
Dee was onscreen for "less than ten minutes" as the mother of Denzel Washington's character, Frank Lucas. Her performance ends with a "climactic slap across her son's face."
For this role, Dee was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and she won a Screen Actors Guild Award in the same category.
13.Meat Loaf as Eddie in Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
He only lasts for a single musical number ("Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul") before being killed off by a jealous Dr. Frank-N-Furter, but as soon as he is gone, he is dearly missed.
15.Gwyneth Paltrow as Beth Emhoff in Contagion (2011)
Paltrow's character, Patient Zero of a deadly pandemic (because hey, in 2011, that was all just fun thriller fodder), dies in the first 10 minutes of Contagion.
19.And finally: James Sie as the Cabbage Merchant from Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–8)
Only appearing in a handful of episodes for a few seconds at a time, the Cabbage Merchant is the unluckiest vegetable seller in the extended Avatar universe.
This is the only entry from a TV show, not a movie, but the Cabbage Merchant has become one of the most iconic memes from a show overflowing with them, and he can't go unmentioned.
Here's a compilation of the Cabbage Merchant's slow descent into madness:
