Geoff Stults
Geoff Stults is an actor, born 1977.
Geoff Stults has one of the more familiar faces on American television and no single role that fixes it. He came up entirely through the network system: a long stretch on 7th Heaven, then October Road and Happy Town, the kind of resume that keeps an actor employed and vaguely remembered.
The studio comedies of the 2000s found the use for him. He is very good as the handsome man the film does not want you to root for: the rival, the date, the friend who likes himself slightly too much, in Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up and She's Out of My League. It is a narrow assignment, and he plays it without asking for sympathy, which is exactly why it works.
Two networks then handed him leads. He was Major Walter Sherman on The Finder and Sgt. Pete Hill on the military comedy Enlisted, and neither show turned him into a star. What happened instead was a second act as the supporting adult in serious limited series, which suits him better than the leads ever did: Mark McCullough on Little Fires Everywhere, Marco on Guilty Party, Jake Davis on The Last Thing He Told Me. The films moved the same direction, from comedy to men in uniform, with Only the Brave and 12 Strong.
Movies (17)
- Wedding Crashers (2005)
- The Break-Up (2006)
- 12 Strong (2018)
- Only the Brave (2017)
- She's Out of My League (2010)
- D.E.B.S. (2005)
- J. Edgar (2011)
- Unforgettable (2017)
- Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018)
- The Express (2008)
- L!fe Happens (2011)
- The Opposite Sex (2015)
- If You Were the Last (2024)
- In The Mix (2005)
- The Den (2022)
- I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009)
- Day 73 with Sarah (2007)
TV (19)
- Grace and Frankie (2015)
- 7th Heaven (1996)
- Zoo (2015)
- The Last Thing He Told Me (2023)
- Man with a Plan (2016)
- The Finder (2012)
- The Odd Couple (2015)
- Cowboy Bebop (2021)
- October Road (2007)
- L.A. Dragnet (2003)
- The Chronicle (2001)
- Little Fires Everywhere (2020)
- Enlisted (2014)
- Guilty Party (2021)
- Reunion (2005)
- Trading Spaces (2000)
- Mad Love (2011)
- Ben and Kate (2012)
- Happy Town (2010)
Where to start with Geoff Stults
The best use anyone has made of him is Little Fires Everywhere: a decent, limited husband in a show with no patience for decent, limited husbands, played without special pleading. Follow it with The Last Thing He Told Me, which asks the same actor to be a question mark rather than a fixture.
For the comedy era, She's Out of My League is the purest sample of the Stults function and Wedding Crashers the most famous. Only the Brave and 12 Strong are the serious-face versions, and the first is much the better film. Completists can go back to October Road and The Finder for the network-lead years, though neither repays a full watch if he is your only reason. Grace and Frankie uses him lightly and well.
The cancelled leads
Six leading roles in shows that networks pulled early, which is a career shape rather than an accident. Enlisted is the one with a permanent following, a military sitcom with real warmth that lasted thirteen episodes.
The recent supporting work
Prestige limited series have used him better than the sitcoms did, generally as a husband who is more complicated than he first appears. Little Fires Everywhere is the best of it and the least comfortable to watch.
The films
Mostly supporting comedy with a run of military dramas later on. Only the Brave is the serious one and gives him a real character to play, and Wedding Crashers is the film most people have actually seen him in.