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The Independent
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘Oh, THAT guy!': 17 instantly recognisable actors whose names you don't know
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 .
The Guardian
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Kaiju No 8: Mission Recon review – the fury and rawness of battle as monsters keep coming
Kaiju, as Japanophiles will know, are Godzilla-style giant monsters that double up as A-bomb and/or natural disaster metaphors, and Naoya Matsumoto's YA spin is a smart addition to the outsized genre. This film is an omnibus recap of the 2024 TV anime's first season, directed by Tomomi Kamiya and Shigeyuki Miya, and tacking on a new 20-minute episode. Taking place in a high-school-style training academy for anti-kaiju troops, it plays like Pacific Rim meets Starship Troopers meets The Incredible Hulk. Kafka (voiced by Masaya Fukunishi) wants to join the Defense Force like his childhood buddy Mina (Asami Seto), who has become the kaiju-reaping star of the outfit. But having flunked the entrance exam, he is stuck as part of the cleanup crews who dispose of city blocks' worth of gore after the battles – and is normally assigned intestine detail to boot. After newbie faeces-mopper Reno (Wataru Kato) encourages him to reapply and they both scrape through, Kafka is invaded by a parasite that allows him to transform into a hench skull-headed kaiju; an alter ego he must, of course, conceal from his new colleagues. From the power fixation (they are assigned special suits that augment them in proportion to their natural abilities) to the petty rivalries between recruits, there is little that is new here for connoisseurs of the likes of My Hero Academia. But it is underpinned by a pressing social anxiety, with thirtysomething 'old dude' Kafka desperately playing catch-up to join the warrior elite; his specialist knowledge of kaiju anatomy swings things in his favour. And Kamiya and Miya execute it all with an addictive punky relish, starting with a bestiary – from human-headed spider-demons to wyverns and proliferating fungal colonies – unfailingly eviscerated with maximum overkill. Though the character work is at times rudimentary, Kamiya and Miya keep things interesting by mixing up animation styles: sophisticated 3D urban fly-bys (the studio is Ghost in the Shell's Production IG), kaomoji-style cutaways for extreme emotional reactions (there are many), and an almost expressionist rawness in the fury of battle that meshes with Yûta Bandoh's strident score and the odd LOL proclamation from Kafka: 'I'm gonna try punching it as hard as I can!' After 90 minutes of this fast-forward kaiju-trouncing, the bonus episode – about deputy captain Hoshina's day off – is soothing, if sentimental, respite. Kaiju No 8: Mission Recon is in UK cinemas from 16 April.
CBS News
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Chicago C2E2 2025 starts Friday at McCormick Place: Guests, directions, opening time and more
The Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo is bringing all things pop culture back to Chicago's McCormick Place this weekend. The three-day event allows fans to interact with some of their favorite creators, artists, and stars from the world of gaming, film, comics, anime, and cosplay. Attendees can engage in fandom while having access to exclusive C2E2 merchandise and collectibles from multiple vendors on the showroom floor. Over 85,000 attendees are expected to attend the convention over the weekend. This year's event will feature panels, photo ops, and autographing opportunities with celebrity guests including: Casts of members from "Robocop," "Futurama," and "Starship Troopers," just to name a few, will also be there this weekend. There will also be a reunion of the core cast of the film " The Breakfast Club" in celebration of its 40th anniversary. For those driving to the convention, parking will be available in Lot A at 2200 S. Prairie Avenue. The rate for parking Is $27 an hour for up to 16 hours and $40 from 16 to 24 hours. If you don't mind a bit of a walk, Lot C at 2227 S. Fort Dearborn Drive is also an option. The same rates apply. Parking can also be purchased online . The best way to get to the convention is via rideshare or public transportation, including the CTA Green and Red lines. The event will be held from Friday, April 11, to Sunday, April 13, at the McCormick Place South Building, 2301 S. Lake Shore Drive. Below are the hours and remaining ticket prices for each day: Friday: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. - $70 for adults Saturday: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. - $80 – Sold Out Sunday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. - $80 Kids 3-day tickets - $45 (for ages 6 to 12) Digital pass available Fans who can't attend the convention in person can purchase a monthly digital pass for $5.99. This pass allows live access to panels, the showcase, and the C2E2 archive.
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Unfailing ability to cheer me up': why The Rebel is my feelgood movie
For me, memorable and/or uplifting film experiences tend to be around individual moments – the resurrection scene in The Matrix for example, or Dizzy's 'I got to have you' in Starship Troopers. (Do either really hold a candle to Mel Brooks's A Little Piece of Poland number in the To Be Or Not to Be remake? The jury is still out.) But without wanting to sound like either a retro bore or a they-don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to fuddy-duddy, I turn to Tony Hancock's yuk-heavy feature vehicle from 1961 for its unfailing ability to cheer me up. I think I must have first watched it in the 1980s on TV, after my dad solemnly recited one of the film's great moments, when Hancock offers a hunk of cheese to a blue-lipsticked beatnik Nanette Newman and says, with a sort of slack-jawed terror: 'You do eat food?' Newman, as it happens, is perhaps The Rebel's most amazing sight: otherwise known as the apparently-prim English star of the first Stepford Wives movie, a middlebrow popular-culture staple in the UK for her washing-up liquid TV commercials, she is tricked out here in a fantastic exi get-up – dead-white face paint, Nefertiti eyeliner, lank copper-coloured hairdo – at almost the exact same moment in time that the Beatles were being talked into ditching their teddy boy quiff. The Rebel in fact is stuffed with great moments: Hancock's opposite-platform ruse to get a seat on a packed commuter train (no longer even theoretically possible, sadly); Hancock appalling waitress Liz Fraser by refusing 'frothy' coffee; Oliver Reed glowering in a Parisian cafe as he argues about art, of all things; and Hancock's epic action-painting sequence complete with bicycle and cow. And of course, the chef's kiss: the exquisite moment when connoisseur critic George Sanders chortles dismissively about Hancock's 'infantile school' picture of a foot ('Who painted that – the cow?') US readers might know the film as Call Me Genius, as that reportedly was the title it was released under there, but quite possibly they won't know it at all; Hancock, acclaimed in Britain, never made headway in Hollywood or on US TV. But the alternative title is actually as accurate a summary of the film as the original one; although the script (by Hancock confreres Galton and Simpson) appears to mock the pretensions of the art world, its target is really the delusional nature of Hancock's Walter Mitty-ish office drone, who ends up back in his suburban bedsit after a meteoric rise and fall in Paris's avant-garde circles. It's a character that draws fully on the persona that Hancock had made his own over the preceding decade: the intellectually ambitious but unfailingly thwarted nobody, hanging on like grim death for better times around the corner but fatalistically resigned to submergence in a tidal wave of mediocrity. I can't think of any equivalent in the US; Hancock is, I sense, far too defeated and self-pitying a figure ever to command a giant audience. George Costanza is probably the closest, but Hancock has little of Costanza's frenzied self-hate. Well, there is something rather wonderful about seeing Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock in full and living colour, operating at the height of his powers, the man who his writers described as 'the best comic actor in the business'. And of course the film is a wonderful portal to a vanished world, a net-curtained Britain just on the cusp of its transformation by 60s pop culture. Lucian Freud called The Rebel the best film ever made about modern art; well, he should know, but for me it's more than that – there's an extra joy in remembering the hours I spent tittering at it with Dad as we lolled on the three-piece suite back in my gormless teenage years. If anything makes me feel good, it's that.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fan of Fun? IGN Live Returns June 7-8 in Los Angeles
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. Mark your calendars, because IGN Live is officially returning to Los Angeles on June 7-8, 2025. The show celebrates everything you love about video games, comic books, collectibles, movies, and TV, making it a fantastic venue for getting hot news about your favorite hobbies. Last year, I enjoyed the fan-centric weekend at IGN Live 2024, which included hands-on time with upcoming games, developer presentations, awesome swag, and celebrity appearances, such as Casper Van Dien from Starship Troopers and Alexey L. Pajitnov of Tetris fame. It was a terrific way to kick off the summer in place of the now-defunct E3, and I highly recommend attending. IGN Live takes place in downtown LA at the Magic Box @ The Reef, and tickets are on sale now. You also enjoy an early bird discount if you visit and purchase tickets between now and April 30. If you plan to attend the show, check out the ticket price breakdown: Basic, single-day tickets purchased between now and April 30 are $15. You can upgrade your IGN Live experience by purchasing a $30 VIP pass between now and April 30. It includes admission for the entire weekend, plus a goodie bag filled with event exclusives. After May 1, single-day tickets go up to $25. VIP passes rise to $40. You may also purchase tickets at the door. Single-day tickets at the door are $30, and VIP tickets are $45. IGN Live is partnering with many studios and publishers this year, with brands including 2K, Arcade1Up, Lenovo, and Netflix. More companies will be announced soon. If last year's show is anything to go by, IGN Live 2025 should be outstanding. IGN Live 2024 had more than 10,000 giveaways and 100 partners over the two-day event. Last year's show was a multi-hall spectacle, featuring a main stage for presentations and giveaways. Spaces were also available for game demos, classic arcade gaming, souvenirs, and refreshments. IGN Live 2024 was a lively show and a fantastic way to spend the weekend. You can expect PCMag to cover the show again, adding our expert insights to the happenings. In 2024, I got hands on with many demos and products at last year's IGN live. There was , a colorful acton-adventure game that paid homage to the Gameboy Advance and The Legend of Zelda in one colorful, sprite-fueled package. I also interviewed developer S-Game after the team's spectacular , and I eagerly await more news about this bombastic martial arts title. I even got hands on with the iconic Pip Boy 3000 Mk V by The Wand Company and chatted with the company's co-founder. Of course, there were too many excellent reveals to count, but we highlighted IGN Live's and the weekend's . Don't fret if you can't make the trip: IGN Live will livestream the weekend event across its many platforms, including , , , Twitter/X, and more. Stay tuned for more information about what to expect from IGN Live 2025, and be sure to check out and for the latest details about the event! (Editors' Note: IGN is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.)
