5. Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) In The French Dispatch (2021)

No one could create a character like Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) but Wes Anderson. He’s a man of quiet authority, deep sentimentality, and an unshakable devotion to a world that’s slipping away. Howitzer is a figure who holds chaos together with a firm but gentle touch. He enforces a hilariously strict no-crying policy, yet he is the first to see the humanity in the stories his writers bring him, shaping their sprawling eccentricities into something refined.

Beneath his gruff pragmatism lies something deeply sentimental—he’s an editor who truly believes in the beauty of storytelling, even as the paper itself fades into memory. Bill Murray’s performance here is his best in any Anderson movie (he’s been in ten), a masterclass in understated warmth and dry wit, embodying the weary but devoted editor with effortless charm. With just a raised eyebrow, a clipped piece of advice—”Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose”—or a quiet, knowing glance, he gives Howitzer the gruff yet deeply sentimental presence that makes him feel like the soul of the newsroom.