Brian Palermo
Brian Palermo is an actor, born 1966.
One scene, one line, out again. Brian Palermo has built a long career on parts that exist to keep a story moving: the computer science professor in The Social Network, a paramedic in The Happytime Murders, an FBI voice in Thank You for Smoking, Marvin in Pee-wee's Big Holiday, Cazwell in Big Momma's House. Born in New Orleans in 1966, he works in the corner of the industry where being quick and reliable matters more than being remembered.
The second job explains the first. Palermo is an improviser and an improv instructor, which is the training that produces actors who can be handed two lines on the morning of a shoot and make them land, and he has written as well as performed: animation credits including Warner Brothers' Histeria! and Disney's The Weekenders and Dave the Barbarian. Television has used him the same way film does, in That '80s Show as Kenmore and in Family Law, Damon and Sons & Daughters.
The third job is the interesting one. He is a science communicator, and he co-wrote Connection: Hollywood Storytelling Meets Critical Thinking with Randy Olson and Dorie Barton, a book about teaching scientists to hold an audience. That is an unusual place for a working character actor to end up, and it makes more sense of the man at the front of the lecture theatre in The Social Network than any other credit on his page.
Movies (11)
TV (4)
Where to start with Brian Palermo
You are hunting sightings rather than performances here, so choose by picture. The Social Network is the obvious one, with him lecturing at the front of the room in a film whose dialogue people still repeat.
Thank You for Smoking is the sharpest comedy on the list, though he is a voice in it rather than a face. Pee-wee's Big Holiday is the most fun. Big Momma's House and Kicking & Screaming are the broad studio comedies of his busiest stretch, and My Life in Ruins gives him an actual character with a name and some scenes to use it in.
That '80s Show is the television pick, a short-lived sitcom with him as Kenmore. If the improv teaching and the science communication interest you more than the filmography, that is a reasonable response to this page.