Amid all the fuss at Christmas time, the death of Charles Durning, one of America’s great character actors, was slightly overlooked. A tough-looking, broad-faced man, with the aura of an ex-boxer, he excelled as Lieutenant Snyder in The Sting and for the Coen Brothers in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Hudsucker Proxy. But his finest moment involved falling embarrassingly in love with Dorothy Michaels – played by a dragged-up Dustin Hoffman – in the immortal Tootsie.