Christian Clemenson

Christian Clemenson, from Humboldt, Iowa, has one of the most quietly enviable resumes in American character acting: nearly forty years of showing up in very good films for four minutes at a time. Larry in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Broadcast News, Edwin in The Fisher King, James Conklin in Hero, Dr. Chuck in Apollo 13, and the LAPD officer in The Big Lebowski who is plainly never going to find that car.

The through-line is that he plays men defined by a job title rather than a personality. Inspector Schell in J. Edgar, Dr. Victor Fields in Malignant, Tom Loman on CSI: Miami, Walter in Fly Me to the Moon, Jack in Mighty Joe Young. These are exposition parts, structurally, and he makes them land by playing competence instead of character: the guy who already knows the answer and is mildly irritated that nobody asked sooner.

Twice he has been given more, and both times he took it. Tom Burnett in Paul Greengrass's United 93 is a real man played without a shred of heroic underlining, in a film that would have collapsed under one false note. And Jerry "Hands" Espenson on Boston Legal, a character built out of physical tics that could have been humiliating in another actor's hands, won him the 2006 Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series out of three nominations.

More recently he played prosecutor William Hodgman in American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, which is the same trick again: a real person, a specific job, no showboating.