The television is the same; it is on leads, and exists on those who live round it. The task of the character actor is to enter a machine which is already running and adjust its temperature within a few seconds: polish a joke, incline a scene toward something dangerous or do the Coleman to a throwaway beat the idea of the secret thesis of the show.
Certain faces have become so common that the viewer is able to identify the voice, the pose, the atmosphere, at times quicker than the name. These are actors who have made supporting roles into marks of signature and who, also, with decades and genres, have made Oh, it is that person sound like praise. These are the 10 scene-stealers that are in the long-haul of television.
1. Margo Martindale
Martindale is one of the select few who can make authority look inhabited and not acted upon; even when a character is immoral, the resolutions are made with absolute confidence. This is why her Emmy haul remains a literature of genre: she has been awarded three acting Emmys, one of which was in 2011 in the category of Justified and another one in 2013 in the category of The Americans. She is able to perform competence as comfort, or competence as a threat and both incarnations rob oxygen. What comes out is a performer who makes it seem like a mislabel of supporting.
2. Denis O’Hare
O’Hare is a master of characters who come in with a point to make, and go out of the scene. He is most frequently watched on the numerous visages of FX’s American Horror Story, where one actor can turn into a revolving gallery of threat, sorrow and purely vile and entertaining appeal. The precise thing that sells it is that the voice remains under control, the emotions remain crisp, and the weirdness never goes soft. He remains precise even at the time when the plot is maximalist.
3. John Michael Higgins
Higgins is the sitcom period: the glance that comes out at the right time, the indignation that is expressed in a polite way, the sentence that is read that turns the most ordinary sentence into an insult that has been written in calligraphy. His resume is an American TV tour in itself, as he has featured in shows such as, but not limited to, Seinfeld, Glee, and Community. He also shows up at the least expected moment by the viewers such as in a voice on Bobs Burgers. The connective tissue is ever identical: performance which knows precisely how to be more than the moment without rupturing it.
4. Julia Garner
Garner as Ruth Longmore does not merely put spice into the series, Ozark; she shifts the axis of the show. The defensive shyness and the explosive feeling, which the character has, are so evident in the body language before a single word hits that it is why the drama became the loudest clue in the series. It is also worth noting that Garner was the only cast member mentioned to have won the Primetime Emmys in that season, and she did so three years in a row, as the supporting actress in a drama. She provides the voltage when a scene requires it, no heating up.
5. David Hyde Pierce
Pierce played Niles Crane in Frasier; he has turned a minor part into the best tool of the show: anxious grace, romantic desire, surgical timing all rolled into one more and more unstable human being. The comedy of the character succeeds since it is founded on complete characterization as opposed to a single type, as well as Pierce is playing with that inner world, as it were a secret that the audience alone is entitled to. The jokes in the sketch would be well deserved when they strike the nail, the feeling when they strike the nail would be inappropriate. Many sitcoms have a standout. There is no one who has as a performer his own engine and pressure gauge.
6. Laurie Metcalf
The Jackie of Roseanne on the show presented by Metcalf is a master piece on how to perform a supporting part that makes a show emotionally real. Jackie is desperate (or dry or optimistic or brittle) at times within the same conversation, and Metcalf achieves making those transitions read as human instead of acting. It is not the punchlines but the reaction shots, which silently rewrite the stakes, that make the power. That is a superpower in ensemble comedy, making the room truer by making it funnier.
7. Uzo Aduba
In Orange is the New Black, Suzanne Warren, a character labeled as Crazy Eyes by Aduba, does not appear as her first appearance, but rather as a full-fledged character that creates a new dimension on the screen she occupies. The play has two truths simultaneously, comic unpredictability and a desire to belong without becoming sentimental. Aduba is capable of falling on a laugh and skimming the same beat like a bruise without any previous warning. It is that spectrum that makes the character be remembered by the audience as a face of a series as opposed to a side-note.
8. Peter Dinklage
Tyrion Lannister is the sort of character that may turn into a pure quote machine, yet Dinklage provides it with something more challenging: moving intelligence that will always be emotional. He has been awarded the Emmy for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series four times with the series Game of Thrones, and this is a record that speaks of how he was able to dominate scenes as the storyline continued to expand. His Tyrion has a way of winning, pricking, withdrawing, and hitting sometimes all in one word dialogue is action. He uses intimacy as epic in a cast made on scale.
9. Sandra Oh
Cristina Yang on the show “Grey anatomy is a reminder that charisma is not volume. Oh is cleverly cast as Cristina is an ultra-competitive and emotionally detached person, who is surprisingly faithful, and the comedy is even funnier because its stinging with the truth of real ambition as opposed to sitcom snark. The scenes involving Cristina are generally quicker; the rhythm is altered on the occasions that she talks. Even those who do not follow the series keenly are aware of who she is precisely, the reveal of a performance that runs out of its show.
10. Giancarlo Esposito
Gus Fring by Esposito is constructed through restraint: the composed smile which falls as a caution, the cautious words which make small talk sound like a war strategy. He has gained fame in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, where the controlled surface of the character comes into being as the focus tension is manifested in immobility. Certainly, Esposito has also remained acutely involved in television outside of that, such as a guest spot on Once Upon a Time and Dear White People. The trick of scene-stealing in this case is minimalism: do less, and do it louder.
What these performers have in common is not one genre or personalities, it is the possibility to make the supportive space vital. Their faces become familiar, as the work is constant: certain decisions, neat time, and the presence type that transforms the scene into a memory.
