We asked critics and Hollywood creators: Which supporting players make everything better?
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Before we get into the list, some housekeeping: What makes an actor a character actor?
attempt to pin it down, and youll go mad wading through counterexamples.
The most obvious definition is that a character actor is not a lead.
(Frequently theyre not even the fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-billed in the credits, either.)
But I look like Chet Baker now.
(Camp later clarified that he loves Chet Baker and was not trying to insult him.)
The best character actors take ordinariness and make it highly specific.
Character actors often have a sense of timelessness to them as well.
And then its awesome, because theres so much fascinating work.
The Dowd-Martindale Rule:If a performer has won a lead or supporting-actor Emmy, that performer is ineligible.
(Winners of an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor are permitted.)
The Hahn Rule:If a performer currently works primarily as a lead, that performer is ineligible.
Also, the performer had to be alive, but we didnt know who to name that one after.
Lets get to the names*.
But shes probably best known for portraying moms.
For another actor, this might be a bad thing.
As Loreen Horvath, mother of Lena Dunhams Hannah onGirls,Baker is a much different kind of mom.
Shes blunt and sometimes self-involved (like mother, like daughter).
In one of the final episodes, Gummies, Baker is onscreen for just a handful of minutes.
Her performance is one of the things you remember about that episode, years later.
I think its crucial for actors to have full lives outside of acting.
The Queens Gambitis only the latest.
Just watch the way he listens it’s possible for you to see him hear the people around him.
From the age of 20, I was playing people over 50,she once told an interviewer.
My face reads mean and hard.
It took years for Dickey to carve out a place for herself in the industry.
As a struggling actor in New York, agents often didnt know what to do with her.
(Dickey continues to work regularly in theater, often with southern playwright Del Shores.)
Shes a staggeringly good actress.
Its not just her tough demeanor that makes us take notice; it is her intense unpredictability.
When Dale Dickey is onscreen, anything seems possible.
Domingo came to acting late, and his big breaks didnt occur until his late 30s.
In these early roles, he was a vocal chameleon, a high-energy ham.
(Most of the shadows in this life are brought on by standing in your own sunshine.)
But as Domingo got into his 40s, his energy slowed down, smoothed out.
Theres often a comfort to his onscreen presence.
But theres a directness to Domingo, too his is not the voice of a bullshitter.
The hammer cant shape steel without the anvil.
But any role Goggins plays carries with it some element of his distinctive physical presence.
Gogginshas saidthat his first role was for the 1992 Billy Crystal filmMr.
Saturday Night, in which he played a Confederate soldier who was eventually edited out of the movie.
All Goggins roles are glorious, andJustifieds Boyd Crowder will follow him forever.
In that role, Goggins is intense and self-absorbed but also loose-limbed.
Its everything hes best at (weird, magnetic, vulpine) in one silly, perfect moment.
Julie Newmar
You know exactly who youre dealing with as soon as a Beth Grant character walks into frame.
Such is the price of being as good as Grant is at making the smallest roles utterly indelible.
WhenTo Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!
Bryan Fuller kept her as a recurring totem, bringing her Marianne Marie Beetle character fromWonderfallstoPushing DaisiestoMockingbird Lane.
Greer encourages her to go to the airport and catch the love of her life before hes gone.
What is left for her to do if not coach her friends on their love lives?
Films likeThe Wedding Plannerand13 Going on 30solidified her as the early-aughts go-to, must-book bubbly sidekick.
But she also possesses a once-in-a-lifetime comedic timing that is singularly and innately unhinged.
(See every time she stole a scene inArrested Developmentas a boob-flashing personal assistant.)
(With 150 film and TV credits under his belt, hes probably played someone you actually have.)
It may have been there that national audiences first realized that they wanted him as their companion-in-trouble too.
McKinley Henderson is a presence deserving of center stage.
But in film, hes largely been used at the edges, twinkling.
(Hes been two different recurring judges on two differentLaw & Orderfranchises.)
quality will serve him well as Thufir Hawat in the upcomingDune.
Youll have to look at him twice to really see him.
The first time youll see the saint; the second time, youll see the bomb.
The moment brims with a frightening tension.
But his signature role might be a single, breathless scene in Barry JenkinssIf Beale Street Could Talk.
And in so doing, it givesBeale Streetits most haunting scene.
She plays Maxine, the chipper good friend throwing a big birthday party for Lyonnes character, Nadia.
Lynch plays Arthur Leigh Allen, a prime Zodiac Killer suspect.
Lynchs version of Allen appears both totally innocent, a man with explanations for everything, and intensely menacing.
You get the sense that theres something twitching under his skin, which is pulled tight to contain him.
Thats why his appearance sparks a frisson of excitement.
Something very interesting is about to happen when Lynch enters.
He does voices in the stuff your kids like to watch, likeDuckTalesandDoolittle.
But Mantzoukas has dramatic range, too.
But the ubiquitous actor has, as his fans know, delivered striking and indelible work for decades.
Like Mako, Mas career would not be defined by one kind of role or one medium.
Still, you wouldnt want to get in her way.
(She played Goneril inthe gender-bentKing Learstarring Glenda Jackson in 2019.)
Those qualities arent lessened when her character isnt in a power suit or holding a detectives notepad.
But its in the live action realm where her gifts are most resonant.
She delivers cutting remarks with a no-nonsense weariness.
Melamed plays Sy Ableman, the smarmy nemesis to Michael Stuhlbargs Larry Gopnik.
I am a serious man, Sy tells Larry; later, he is eulogized with those same words.
And he has thatvoice.
But what might be best about Melamed is the sense that hes always up for an adventure.
Rather, hes a small-time crook who makes scattered appearances as comic relief.
Morgan is great in the part, though comedy is hardly his calling card.
Such serious roles give an actor a lot to chew on, but Morgan never veers into cliche.
The New YorkTimescritic A.O.
Both roles showcased OHares ability to evince villainy, cut with something more disarmingly human.
When hes not doing backstrokes in the horror pool, OHare is playing functionaries with a spark.
Hes still managing to surprise us with a theater-trained emotional agility in even the smallest roles.
(Ortiz works with Mann often, most recently as an FBI honcho inBlackhat.)
Its a comfort blanket she cannot bring herself to put down, ever.
As a grieving mother in HBOsPerry Mason, Rankin animates both sides of that equation.
She is soft and fragile; she is steely and resilient.
There are two lesser-known Rankin performances that warrant mention.
The other was as Ophelia in the Public Theaters 2017Hamlet.
Theyre the roles hes still best known for: figures of authority, mid-to-upper-level guys with a badge.
He plays similar roles as Phillip Broyles onFringeand Irvin Irving onBosch.
He is the Black boss of irascible white lone wolves.
Hes not the rogue crime fighter breaking things apart so you can find justice.
Hes that guys supervisor.
Even as a voice actor on the revival ofDuckTalesReddick plays a general.
Hes memorable as the hotel concierge Charon in theJohn Wickmovies and as a father onSylvies Love.
Root is a vocal chameleon, and its a key component to his memorable everyman roles.
So of course they cast Root.
Like hisThe Shape of Waterco-star Michael Shannon, Stuhlbarg has mastered both leading and supporting roles.
And no actor has quite the same lilting voice, a product of his Dallas upbringing.
Hes probably most famous as Bill Murrays daily tormenter Ned Ryerson (Needle-Nose Ned!
Ned the Head!)
inGroundhog Day, but even those whove somehow missed that film have doubtlessly seen him somewhere.
McQueen inAlien Fury:Countdown to Invasionand Plumber inYou May Not Kiss the Bride.
Theres always an X-factor to a Tobolowsky performance, a sense that his characters have unseen depths.
Sometimes those depths appear quite dark.
It might have been a laugh line for another actor.
Its fitting that hes found an audience as a storyteller drawing on his life and career.
His work is rich with the sense we all have stories to tell.
On-camera, she restricts her movements almost exclusively to her head while her motions below the neck remain minimalist.
Its a perfect combination for the robust authority figures she often plays.
OnOrange Is the New Black, she played the manipulative, sociopathic inmate Vee.
Her controlled vocal dynamics further instill her frequent matriarchal characters with an unshakable aura.
It feels as though he could be from anywhere and everywhere in these United States.
Hes clearly seen some shit.
Yet no matter his character, you get the feeling hes spent a lifetime with them.
Although he has plenty of roles in contemporary-set works, he excels in period pieces.
Hes similarly made characters from the past feel lived-in and real in shows likeAgent Carterand most recently inPerry Mason.
Whighams characters, more than anything, just want to be left alone.
Fortunately for us, no one is willing to do that.
When Whitlock saysshit,he stretches it out like a piece of profane taffy.
Under his control, its a long, long slug of whiskey or a gnarly extended guitar solo.
Its not just a curse word, its anexperience.
roles across theLaw & Orderfranchises that its overwhelming to try and list them all.
enables him to steal scenes when hes not even trying.
That clear lack of ego is part of his charm.
