This website attempts to draw character actors, both current and classic, from the closing credits - and from the back of your mind - into focus and recognition.
Here are bios of the faces, with essentially unnoticed names, that we've been inviting onto our screens for years. Each profile is based on interviews and enhanced by information gleaned from other personal and public sources. The research always goes below the surface and the stories of the actors' bodies of work, their uncommon but relatable lives and - in some cases - the legacies they have left behind takes time to gestate. The collection is and, by nature, will always be a work in progress.
Therefore, if you would like to find a particular actor who is not yet here, I invite you to contact me to suggest an entry. If you prefer surprises, you can sign-up to be notified when a new actor is added.
The under-lauded are here.
There are many character actors playing starring or non-starring roles, whose names, such as Melissa McCarthy or Walter Brennan, are readily familiar to film and TV buffs. But I have found that even the professional peers of many actors consistently cast in non-leading roles – not "bit players," mind you, but supporting actors with substantial careers - often cannot identify these colleagues by name.
Yet, whenever I hear someone of any generation look at an actor's face on a screen, be it Harry Townes in a Twilight Zone episode or Anna Maria Horsford in a segment of Grey's Anatomy, and say, "Oh, it's THAT guy [woman]!" I know that the actors of STVC are almost in our genes.
There is a cadre of actors who have bodies of work in prime-time series, soap operas, commercials, and television movies while never having appeared on the "silver screen." This is a newer breed of thespian and some may be included in this collection. For the most part however, actors act everywhere. Supporting TV Cast – while rooted in television – is, by default, about underacknowledged actors from cinema as well.
Where are the places you know her from and how did she get there? This is a place to connect the professional dots – and the personal ones.
A blog on backstories, musings, and observations about lesser known facts and less considered aspects of the relationship between TV/film production, television viewing, and our world.