There is a certain sort of Hollywood success that is not accompanied by a fragrance deal, a late-night monologue, or name that auto-complete search. It comes unobtrusively, by repetition: a face turning up everywhere, a voice which tells half the history of modern culture, a character part that is so exact it leads the entire scene into the air.
It is not so much that these performers remain anonymous to their audience as they are simply misplaced in the memory, familiar at first sight, named seldom. What they give us is immersion: the sensation of a fictional workplace, courtroom, spaceship, or even a family dinner that is not made up but lived in.
1. Jeff Perry, the master of lovable harm
Jeff Perry has established a career of playing men whose power is cut in sharp corners. He is Thatcher Grey on the series Grey’s Anatomy, a father who fails with a punch, and he is Cyrus Beene on the series Scandal, where charisma and smartness smile with the same face. He also features in Inventing Anna as journalist Lou, a character that can be developed to allow an actor to hint at what might have happened in between. The gimmick of Perry is not volume but pressure, he allows a scene to encclose him until the viewer experiences the moral compromising on the spot.
2. Gary Cole the patron saint of the polite menace
Gary Cole is capable of giving a boss who can be bossy one sentence and a villain who is able to make the room cold without having to raise his voice. Lots of viewers initially recognized him as bill Lumbergh in office space, and he was delivering office tyranny in a way as impersonal as requesting a stapler. However, his performance spans to darker content such as his work as Jeffrey MacDonald in Fatal Vision (1984), and to genre television, as Sheriff Lucas Buck in American Gothic. The most persistent trait that Cole possessed is restraint; the threat (or humour) is never in what he should have exaggerated.
3. Néstor Carbonell, the eyes, the myth, the Emmy
Néstor Carbonell has also demonstrated one whole city myth,that about eyeliner-and at the same time presented himself in his own features. He is Richard Alpert in the TV series, Lost, or a refined actor in the Batman movies of Christopher Nolan to many. His face was honed by an Emmy nomination as the outstanding guest actor in a dramatic series in the case of Shogun, where he was playing a part of Vasco Rodrigues which is both dangerous and comic friction. Carbonell recounted the victory in his usual form of humble speech: In a million years I did not imagine that anything like this would come out of it. His message to the craft of guest work was also in that very full circle sense: meaning to me but also as a reminder to me how precious that role of guest actor is.
4. Neal McDonough, the hard boundary character actor
The filmography created by Neal McDonough is a kind of a journey through contemporary American spectacle: Band of Brothers, Minority Report and American Horror Story to name but a few. However, one of the most iconic facts connected with his career is not a role, but a rule, which was his refusal to kiss the other actors on screen, and it influenced opportunities. He made it very clear on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast: “In my contracts I had never stated that I would not kiss another woman on-screen. It was me.” McDonough does not give up, and this is how a long career can be constructed, not only through flexibility, but also through the possibility of negotiating the boundaries of flexibility.
5. Toby Jones, the fading out man with a passport of faces
Toby Jones is an amiable reminder that there is no guarantee that the recognition will always stick to a particular look. He played Truman Capote in Infamous and plays the character of Doctor Arnim Zola in Captain America in the Marvel universe, the two roles bearing practically no similarity other than a painstaking cunning. Jones also tends to substitute his own corporeal mark with the reasoning within the character which is one of the reasons why untrained audiences can hardly name him. The play does not disappear; the actor melts.
6. John Carroll Lynch, warmth and dread in the same body
John Carroll Lynch switches between sensitivity and danger with disturbing fluidity. He is the indulgent husband in Fargo, then occurs in Zodiac where he is present in such a way that even the least important conversation seems an ordeal. He also directed the indie film Lucky that is a mute swivel and fits his reputation on attentive and actor-first storytelling. Lynch tend to write about what lies beneath the line- subtext that comes to mind as a mood prior to it coming to mind as information.
7. William Fichtner, a human heart within an ill choice
The screen presence by William Fichtner is often not told to like but is often told to understand. His appearances include the Colonel Willie Sharp in Armageddon and a corrupt campaign manager in Crash, and even between genres where it is hard to discover moral clarity. When he is moulded as a danger, the danger is likely to come with a plausible interior experience, a normal annoyance, a domestic rationale, a familiar need. It is that stratification which causes his characters to so frequently stay behind the story when it has since passed.
8. Peter Stormare, the career based on being indefinable
Peter Stormare has been the answer to a very oddly precise casting want since decades: a human coloratura which will lean a scene with menace without overstating it. He has been a memorable criminal in Fargo, demon in Constantine, and even performed himself in the PS4 game Until Dawn. There is the accent, the look, the moment–Stormare comes as a complete ambience. The audience will recall the taste instantly when the name will not stick.
9. The voice living within the culture is Wallace Shawn
The fame of Wallace Shawn functions in the manner of the collective reference point: the wallace is often remembered reading his lines better than recalling the plot behind that. In The Princess Bride Vizzini is the origin of my inconceivable!, and he is Rex in the Toy Story films, and his solicitous, endearing cadence is embedded in childhood memory. His career is also in the area of drama work, such as his film debut in Manhattan by Woody Allen. The unique sound of Shawn makes even a fleeting look a trademark.
