You’ve probably had this moment. A face shows up on screen, you know exactly who it is, and the name just won’t come. You’ve seen that person in a comedy, a thriller and maybe a cartoon, yet the poster never carried their picture.
Character actors do much of the heavy lifting in cinema. They build the worlds around the leads, and many have careers that run longer and wider than any single star’s. Here are seven whose work you’ve almost certainly seen, whether you realized it or not.
J.K. Simmons
Simmons won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Whiplash, playing a ferocious jazz instructor. That role finally put his name in front of audiences who had known his face for years. Before it, he had been a steady presence in films like Juno, where he played the main character’s dad.
Superhero fans know him as J. Jonah Jameson, the newspaper editor from Sam Raimi’s early Spider Man films. He came back to the part in Spider Man: Far From Home and Spider Man: No Way Home. His voice work and television credits, including Oz and the Law & Order franchise, add even more to the list.
Stephen Root
Root is the sort of actor whose voice might reach you before his face does. He played the mumbling, stapler obsessed Milton in Office Space, and he voiced the fish Bloat in Finding Nemo. On television, he spent years as Bill Dauterive on the animated series King of the Hill.
His film résumé also includes the blind radio station owner in O Brother, Where Art Thou? More recently, HBO’s Barry gave him a bigger showcase as the manipulative Monroe Fuches, a performance that earned him Emmy nominations. Comedy and menace both come easily to him.
Richard Jenkins
Jenkins spent decades in supporting parts before awards voters took notice. He earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for The Visitor, then another for Best Supporting Actor for The Shape of Water. Both nominations came well into a career that many viewers assumed was already complete.
Audiences also know him as the late patriarch Nathaniel Fisher on Six Feet Under. He appeared in comedies like Step Brothers and the horror satire The Cabin in the Woods, and he won an Emmy for the miniseries Olive Kitteridge. His range runs from gentle to sharply funny.
Margo Martindale
Martindale has two Emmy wins for guest and supporting work, one for Justified and one for The Americans. On Justified she played Mags Bennett, a soft spoken crime matriarch who stayed unsettling in every scene. Those wins showed how much a supporting role can leave behind.
Her film work stretches back decades and includes Dead Man Walking, The Hours and Million Dollar Baby. She was also part of the large ensemble in August: Osage County. She tends to turn up in small scenes and make them stick.
Steve Buscemi
Buscemi’s wiry, nervy screen presence became a trademark in the 1990s. He played Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs and the talkative kidnapper in Fargo. He also popped up in The Big Lebowski, Con Air and Armageddon, usually playing someone slightly out of his depth.
He later proved he could carry a series as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, a role that won him a Golden Globe. Younger viewers may know him as the voice of Randall in Monsters, Inc. He has also directed for film and television.
Walton Goggins
Goggins built his reputation on playing charming, unpredictable men, often on the wrong side of the law. Television fans first met him in The Shield and then in Justified. On the big screen, he appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight.
His profile rose again in the 2020s with Amazon’s Fallout, where he played the Ghoul. He then joined the third season of The White Lotus in 2025, earning an Emmy nomination for it. For a longtime supporting player, it marked a clear step into wider attention.
Brian Cox
Cox, a Scottish actor, played Hannibal Lecktor in Michael Mann’s Manhunter, a full film before the better known Lecter portrayals. He went on to appear in Braveheart, Rushmore, The Bourne Identity, X2 and Troy. Few actors move between prestige drama and big action films so easily.
In later years he became widely known as Logan Roy, the volatile media tycoon in HBO’s Succession, which ran from 2018 to 2023. The role won him a Golden Globe. Much of his stage and screen career had already been built on authority and a sharp, wary stare.
