Forget dodgy dialogue, sub-standard special effects and lazy plotlines, if there’s one thing that can totally ruin a film for me it’s not remembering where I know a familiar actor from. The trouble almost always stems from an extremely minor character in the movie who barely has any screen time, but if the answer ‘oh that’s so-and-so from what’s-it-called’ doesn’t pop into my head within a few seconds, I am plagued by the torturous memory of their face for hours and berate myself for not doing more brain exercises to improve my shoddy memory.

Take Star Trek for instance. Now, granted, nothing could really deaden the awesomeness of that film (except perhaps the worrying realization that you have actually become a certifiable Trekkie) but I spent a disproportionate amount of my cinema time trying to work out where I recognized Captain Kirk’s father from, who appears for about three minutes at the beginning and then never again. And I can tell you that when, a few hours later, I gave up and used IMDb to find out that he was just a guy called Kim in Home & Away, I definitely felt I’d been cheated in some profound way.

But nothing beats the heady satisfaction of a really great “spot”, when you’ve struggled and struggled and then the answer just floats into the mind, usually while doing something totally unconnected to the issue like showering or, as happens very often in my case, sleeping.

Some recent coups for me have included spotting Miss Cackle from childhood favourite The Worst Witch as a very minor character in ER, and clocking Lucas from Empire Records (this time more of a teenage rebellion favourite) in 24.

But my finest hour would have to be the spot that involved Tomas Arana (pictured). He has a bit part in Gladiator as Quintus, one of the Roman soldiers, and the first time I watched Gladiator back in 2000 I struggled for days with his unidentified face. The truly bizarre thing was that whenever I tried to picture him, half of his face was always obscured. It was only when, weeks later, the realization came to me that he played big baddie Greg Portman in Bodyguard that it all finally made sense – I was picturing the final scene when he tries to assassinate Whitney Houston, and half of his face is obscured by his video camera rigged to fire bullets.

Wow that was a good day… but it did make me question my sanity a little.

Anyone else care to share the inner workings of their weird and wonderful mind?