Andy Daly
Andy Daly is an actor, born 1971.
Andy Daly, born in Mount Kisco, New York in 1971, has a film credit list that reads as a museum of small parts: Movie Goer in Drake & Josh, Husband in Christmas with the Kranks, a doctor on Silicon Valley, Mr. Fuller in She's Out of My League, Curtis in What Happens in Vegas. Film has almost never known what to do with him. Television worked it out.
The visible version is Terrence Cutler in Eastbound & Down and Principal Brown on Modern Family, plus recurring turns on Veep, Black-ish, Trial & Error, Reno 911! and Comedy Bang! Bang!. The real one is Review. As Forrest MacNeil he presents a programme that rates life experiences on a five-star scale at viewer request, and the show is unflinching about what obeying those requests does to a man's life. It is one of the bleakest comedies American television has produced and Daly plays it throughout with the unbroken cheer of a local news anchor, which is precisely what makes it unbearable and very funny.
The specific thing he does, across everything, is play men whose politeness is a hostage situation. The smile is fixed, the voice is warm, and something underneath is going badly wrong. It is the reason his improvised characters have a cult following well beyond his on-screen work.
Animation keeps him busy: Two-Face on Harley Quinn, Darryl on Regular Show, plus Bob's Burgers, Solar Opposites, The Great North and Adventure Time. He also turns up as Christian Holloway in Kimi and Marty Allison in The Informant!.
Movies (24)
- A Haunted House (2013)
- Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)
- She's Out of My League (2010)
- Jules (2023)
- Life As We Know It (2010)
- What Happens in Vegas (2008)
- Yogi Bear (2010)
- The Informant! (2009)
- Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
- Big Miracle (2012)
- Kimi (2022)
- Unfrosted (2024)
- Semi-Pro (2008)
- Table 19 (2017)
- Post Grad (2009)
- Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (2016)
- Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation (2024)
- Butter (2012)
- School for Scoundrels (2006)
- The People We Hate at the Wedding (2022)
- High Road (2012)
- Crash Test: With Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer (2015)
- The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1997)
- The Space Between (2021)
TV (38)
- American Dad! (2005)
- Modern Family (2009)
- Regular Show (2010)
- @midnight with Chris Hardwick (2013)
- black-ish (2014)
- Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake (2023)
- Harley Quinn (2019)
- Drake & Josh (2004)
- Silicon Valley (2014)
- Solar Opposites (2020)
- The League (2009)
- Comedy Bang! Bang! (2012)
- The Great North (2021)
- Big City Greens (2018)
- Wander Over Yonder (2013)
- Eastbound & Down (2009)
- Inside Job (2021)
- Kiff (2023)
- Lessons in Chemistry (2023)
- Common Side Effects (2025)
- Kite Man: Hell Yeah! (2024)
- Royal Crackers (2023)
- Digman! (2023)
- The Life & Times of Tim (2008)
- Trial & Error (2017)
- Playing House (2014)
- Bajillion Dollar Propertie$ (2016)
- Strip Law (2026)
- The Shivering Truth (2018)
- The Showbiz Show with David Spade (2005)
Where to start with Andy Daly
Review first, and it is not a close call. Watch the first three episodes and if the tone has not got its hooks in you, nothing else on this list will. If it has, the whole thing is one of the great sustained comic performances of the last decade.
Eastbound & Down is the best supporting work: Terrence Cutler is a small, awful man played with total commitment. Comedy Bang! Bang! is where the improvised-character habit is on open display and is the most direct route to why comedians love him.
For animation, Harley Quinn gives him a wonderfully pathetic Two-Face and Solar Opposites uses him well. Modern Family is the mainstream sample. Kimi and The Informant! are the two places a film has actually used the unsettling side rather than the friendly one.
The television comedy
Daly specialises in relentlessly cheerful men about to come apart, and the guest roles are where that gets deployed. Eastbound & Down gives him the fullest version, and Silicon Valley the most recognisable.
The animation
A steady run in adult animation, where the register suits the form. Harley Quinn and Inside Job are the best written of them, and Solar Opposites is the other Roiland series.
The films
Mostly small comic parts in studio pictures. The Informant is the best film on the list, a Soderbergh comedy where everybody plays it straight, and Kimi is the recent one.