Great Character Actors: Denis O’Hare
Posted on July 7, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I love character actors, those utility infielders who have to create a complete character in seconds and hold a scene opposite a superstar. They’re the ones who always seem vaguely familiar but are so chameleon-like that we never quite place them.
One of my favorites is the astoundingly versatile Denis O’Hare, who seems to be in everything these days. He’s a testy judge in “The Good Wife” and the vampire King of Mississippi in “True Blood” (very mature material). He has played officious bureaucrats in “The Proposal” (watch the closing credit outtakes) and “Charlie Wilson’s War” and a singing, dancing prince in “Once Upon a Mattress.” He has appeared in “Brothers and Sisters” and “CSI: Miami.” It is a pleasure to be able to pay tribute to such a versatile performer.
There’s no meaner workplace in cinema history than this brutal and back-stabbing real estate company. Spacey’s electrifying performance shows that his self-loathing is only exceeded by his contempt for everyone around him. (Special credit to Alec Baldwin for a stunning turn as a guy from the home office brought in to give a pep talk: “Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”)
Reportedly, this screenplay was inspired by the author’s own experience. The assistant in the story gets his revenge on his sadistic bully of boss by torturing him, but in real life he just put his most appalling behavior up on screen.
He doesn’t yell. He does not insult his staff. He is just massively inconsiderate, making inane and dehumanizing and agonizingly insincere “requests.” I don’t know which is worse — the cover on the TPS reports or Hawaiian Shirt Day. (Special credit to screenwriter Mike Judge, the movie’s screenwriter, as Jennifer Aniston’s boss at Chotchkie’s, who tells her she should have more than the minimum flair.)
Jack Lemmon discovers that the only way to get ahead in this enormous insurance company is to let the boss use your apartment for his assignations.
She pretends to support her assistant’s dreams for advancement, but instead, she steals her ideas. I love her line about why she is sure her boyfriend (Harrison Ford in a magnificent performance) will propose: “We’re in the same city now, I’ve indicated that I’m receptive to an offer, I’ve cleared the month of June… and I am, after all, me.”
Based on interviews with many working women, Coleman’s character was designed to exemplify just about every awful characteristic: lazy, sexist, dishonest, incompetent, and predatory.
Until he learns a lesson from the three Christmas ghosts, Scrooge is a demanding, nasty, and of course very cheap boss who keeps poor Bob Cratchit underpaid and shivering in the cold.
Based on a real-life story, Laughton plays Captain Bligh, whose cruel treatment of his men led to a mutiny, putting him off the ship in a launch. (The real-life Bligh was exonerated after making it back to England in what is still an un-matched feat of navigational skill.)
Ethan Hawke plays a young police officer assigned to work with Washington’s character, a corrupt narcotics detective who manipulates and blackmails him, drawing him into a quagmire of corruption. Washington won an Oscar for his dazzling performance of a man who loves control but is losing his capacity to maintain it.
, about a high school theater techie (he works lights in a production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”) who likes to stay behind the scenes until he meets a pretty transfer student who is suddenly put into one of the starring roles. It is funny, smart, and filled with authentic details and a lot of heart. You can win prizes for your own school theater group by 
is a brilliantly acted story of the complicated relationships of a group of friends and relatives who get together over the 4th of July holiday. It centers around the relationship of Kenneth Talley, Jr. (Richard Thomas), a disabled Vietnam vet in a wheelchair and his partner Jed (Jeff Daniels), his sister June (Joyce Reehling) and recently widowed aunt Sally (Helen Stenborg), and his old friends, a wealthy couple named John and Gwen (Swoosie Kurtz in her Tony award-winning role). It is a searing but ultimately hopeful and healing story of very real characters and also a thoughtful commentary on the Vietnam era. This is one of three plays the gifted Wilson wrote about the Talley family, and it is a part of the superb series of Broadway Theater Archive productions that brought the best of live theater to Showtime audiences in the early 80’s.