Eric Bogosian

Before the screen work there was a man alone on a stage with a microphone. Eric Bogosian grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, in an Armenian-American family, went to the University of Chicago and Oberlin, and built a reputation as a monologuist. His play Talk Radio was a finalist for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and he wrote and starred in the 1988 film version, which took a Silver Bear.

He has spent the decades since playing the man doing the talking. Barry Champlain in Talk Radio is the template: a voice that keeps going past the point where anyone sensible would stop. Arno in Uncut Gems applies the same pressure without a microphone. Travis Dane in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is the villain who narrates his own scheme. Even his most famous recent job is a listener who cannot stop interrupting, Daniel Molloy in Interview with the Vampire, a part he has carried across Talamasca: The Secret Order and into The Vampire Lestat.

The writing never stopped either. He published the novel Mall in 2000, co-created the television series High Incident, and is credited as a historian as well as an actor and playwright. Ararat, in which he plays Rouben, connects the film work to the Armenian history that runs through the rest of his output. In between are the paid supporting jobs, Blade: Trinity, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Gossip, that he does with more precision than they deserve.