Hollywood stars might lure in the punters – but it’s the hardworking supporting actors who truly keep the machine whirring.
The life of a jobbing actor is no doubt difficult; keeping a career alive in an industry so reliant on box-office dollar signs and TV ratings must be increasingly tough at a time when metrics dictate who gets cast in films.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a role you become synonymous with, but it’s the people who show up time and again to fill in the roles further down the call sheet that deserve our respect. These are actors defined by their longevity – their dependable presence can often hike a project’s quality, making them a casting director’s dream. But chances are that if we asked casual viewers what these actors were called, they’d likely shrug.
Well, shrug no more – below, we run through 17 terrific actors whose faces you know, but whose names might have passed you by.
Clancy Brown
You know the face of Clancy Brown – and you certainly know the voice. Brown’s gravelly vocals have enhanced many projects since his breakout role in the 1983 film Bad Boys – putting him in demand for villains, gruff authoritarians and all-round s***birds. The immortal Kurgan in Highlander? That’s Brown. The tyrannical guard in The Shawshank Redemption? Brown again. Starship Troopers’ rough-and-ready Sergeant Zim? You bet it’s Brown. Viewers will have seen him more recently in The Penguin – he played mob boss Salvatore Maroni.
Néstor Carbonell
For years, Lost viewers knew him as “the guy with eyeliner”, his character Richard Alpert becoming such a favourite that his role was drastically bumped up in the later seasons. Before this, he was the mayor of Gotham in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. But in the last decade, Carbonell has found himself associated with a few TV hits that have firmly placed him as a “mum’s favourite”: Psycho prequel Bates Motel and Apple TV+’s The Morning Show. Thanks to his Emmy-winning role as Spanish sailor Vasco in Shōgun, it seems Carbonell will soon not be eligible to appear on this list.
David Krumholtz
Whenever David Krumholtz shows up in something, you know it’s going to be good: he’s an actor who knows a quality project when he sees one. The early roles were on point – he was head elf Bernard in the Santa Clause franchise, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s nerdy pal in 10 Things I Hate About You. Since then, he’s worked with Ang Lee (The Ice Storm), the Coen brothers (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), David Simon (The Deuce and The Plot Against America) – and should have been Oscar-nominated over Robert Downey Jr for playing the physicist Isidor in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer. Frankly, the guy has a better filmography than most bankable Hollywood stars.
Kevin Dunn
Kevin Dunn’s Wikipedia page introduces him as an actor “who has appeared in supporting roles in numerous films and television series since the 1980s”. That’s putting it lightly. What this description fails to mention is that Dunn quietly elevates everything he’s in – whether it’s the Transformers franchise (admittedly not hard) or Tony Scott’s unsung masterpiece Unstoppable. He’s probably best known, though, for Veep, where he played the grumpy White House chief of staff Ben Cafferty.
John Hawkes
Two – the number of Oscars and Emmys John Hawkes has been nominated for. They were deserved for his role in Winter’s Bone, as Jennifer Lawrence’s ominous uncle, and as an enigmatic sheriff in the fourth season of True Detective, but that figure should be around five. Highlights include gentle merchant Sol Star, an oasis in the otherwise chaotic Deadwood; a polio-suffering poet in The Sessions; and a creepy cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene. But this is the tip of the iceberg: you might not even realise you’re watching Hawkes thanks to his chameleonic ability to escape into the role. This generation’s Harry Dean Stanton? Just maybe.
CCH Pounder
This entry excuses anyone who’s watched The Shield, who will be fully aware of the name CCH Pounder thanks to the crime drama’s in-your-face credits. But since making her acting debut in Bob Fosse’s film All That Jazz (1979), Pounder has become a supporting acting titan of TV, with roles in everything from ER and Law & Order to NCIS. Pounder is known by the cultists, but not the masses – she was considered for Allison Janney’s role in The West Wing, which would have helped with that – and you might not realise, but she’s one of the Na’vi under all that CGI in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise.
Lois Smith
Let’s hear it for Lois Smith. At 94, she’s still turning in the roles, 70 years after making her debut – opposite James Dean! – in East of Eden. She’s stolen scenes in films across the decades, including Five Easy Pieces (1970), Fatal Attraction (1987), Dead Man Walking (1995), Minority Report (2002) and The Nice Guys (2016). That’s quite the list of credits. TV viewers will know her as Sookie Stackhouse’s warm grandmother Adele in vampire drama True Blood. Smith has become the most dependable ninetysomething actor around. Someone needs to cast her and June Squibb in their own project immediately.
Bill Camp
Most lead stars wish they had the gravitas of perennial supporting actor Bill Camp. He’s dependable, always understated – and plays pissed off better than anyone on the list (sorry, Kevin Dunn). Whether he’s playing a 19th-century politician (Lincoln), an experienced chess tutor (The Queen’s Gambit) or a detective sergeant named Dennis Box (The Night Of), Camp is go-to support for good reason.
Shea Whigham
The Mission Impossible franchise is full to the brim with character actors who’ll have you consulting IMDb to remind yourself where you’ve seen them before. For all your Henry Czernys and Holt McCallanys you’ve got Shea Whigham, who might be the cream of the crop when it comes to modern character actors. Whether he’s chasing Tom Cruise through Abu Dhabi airport or captaining Leonardo DiCaprio’s superyacht in The Wolf of Wall Street, Whigham, with his impressively high hair, is likely to pop up.
Stephen Tobolowsky
We can’t be sure how often Stephen Tobolowsky said “Ned Ryerson” when he was making Groundhog Day, but it’s possibly more than he’s said his own name. While he is best known for playing the overly cheerful insurance salesman in the Bill Murray comedy, he’s arguably the king of the “Hey, it’s that guy” actors, having appeared in everything from Christopher Nolan’s Memento to high-school jukebox musical show Glee.
John Carroll Lynch
One of the many moments of genius in David Fincher’s Zodiac was casting everyman John Carroll Lynch as the prime suspect in an unsolved serial killer case, a role in which he delivered a uniquely disturbing performance. Lynch’s impressive set of credits has seen him play a smorgasbord of roles, from one of the founders of McDonald’s (The Founder) to President Lyndon B Johnson (Jackie). He memorably played Frances McDormand’s loving husband in Fargo and was even the guy who melts to death in Volcano. He’s also flexed his muscles behind the camera, directing the critically acclaimed Lucky in 2017, which featured one of the final roles of the great Harry Dean Stanton.
Amy Ryan
Amy Ryan is arguably on the cusp of becoming a more widely recognised actor thanks to prominent roles in hit TV shows like The Office and Only Murders in the Building. Ryan, though, had been working for well over a decade before she received wider recognition for her performances, popping up in numerous Law & Order episodes and in bit parts opposite Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman, in War of the Worlds and Capote, respectively. Fans of The Wire will best remember her as port authority officer Beadie Russell.
Wood Harris
If there is a cooler character actor than Wood Harris, then we don’t want to know about them. Best known for playing Avon Barksdale, the drug kingpin in The Wire, Harris has been quietly delivering stellar performances for more than 30 years. He’s collaborated with fellow The Wire alumnus Michael B Jordan as a boxing trainer in the three Creed films to date, and was last seen as a shady nightclub owner in Lady in the Lake with Natalie Portman. Cinephiles will also be delighted to learn that he’s set to appear in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie One Battle After Another.
Larry Miller
Another contender for the king of the “that guy” actors is Larry Miller, who we would estimate has been in at least 10 per cent of the movies and TV shows released from 1990 until the present day. As well as filling frequent guest spots on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld and Boston Legal, Miller also has a successful stand-up comedy career. His varied filmography has seen him play Anne Hathaway’s stylist in The Princess Diaries and the hypocritical head of an architecture firm in the abysmal Hulk Hogan superhero comedy Suburban Commando.
Harriet Sansom Harris
A Tony Award winner for her performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Harris is perhaps better known for her work in the world of theatre, where she is a Broadway mainstay. Fans of Frasier would contest this though, as she played Kelsey Grammer’s unhinged, chain-smoking agent, Bebe Glazer, for the entirety of the sitcom’s original run. More modern viewers might recognise her for supporting roles in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza and Phantom Thread as well as a recurring role in Desperate Housewives.
William Fichtner
It’s no secret that Christopher Nolan’s 2008 masterpiece The Dark Knight was heavily inspired by Michael Mann’s equally masterful Heat, but did you know he even went as far as to cast an actor from the 1995 thriller? William Fichtner plays money launderer Roger Van Zant in Mann’s film and also briefly appears in Nolan’s movie as the bank manager who attempts to stop the Joker’s daring heist. As well as having a prominent role in Prison Break, Fichtner can also be seen in classics like Black Hawk Down (2001), Contact (1997) and Strange Days (1995). He’s also got the best line in Michael Bay’s Armageddon: “Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I’ve ever met.” Leaves a lump in the throat every time.
David Dastmalchian
If you need a creepy, slightly nervous guy with an angular face who could also pass for the lead singer in an emo band, then David Dastmalchian is your man. As well as playing numerous supporting roles in superhero films from The Suicide Squad to Ant-Man, Dastmalchian has become a favourite of Denis Villeneuve, who has cast the star in Dune, Blade Runner 2049 and Prisoners. Dastmalchian is not just a character actor, though, as he showed with his smarmy but complex lead performance in Late Night with the Devil.
