James M. Connor
James M. Connor is an actor, born 1960.
Connor's first screen job was a science fiction picture: he turned up in Futureworld in 1976, credited as Robot Clark. What followed was the sort of career that never announces itself. He held recurring parts on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The King of Queens and FCU: Fact Checkers Unit, and passed through The X-Files, Scrubs, Gilmore Girls, Desperate Housewives, The Drew Carey Show and Rules of Engagement as a guest, usually for a scene or two at a time.
Look at what he actually gets hired to play and a pattern appears immediately. A principal. A therapist. A best man. A surly reporter. A general. Connor is the man behind the desk or the microphone, the institutional voice that tells the protagonist something unhelpful in a reasonable tone and then leaves. It is a narrow specialism and he is very good inside it: the delivery is dry, mildly officious, and never plays for the laugh the scene is already getting. In Watchmen he is asked to be a recognisable American face rather than a nameless suit, playing the pundit Pat Buchanan, and the impersonation lands without ever tipping into mimicry.
The later run has been comedy: Martin Seychelles on Vice Principals, work on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreation, Community, Franklin and Bash, and Frank on Miracle Workers. There is no breakout here and no late reinvention. There is a man who has kept working across decade after decade of American film and television, which in this business is the harder feat.
Movies (8)
TV (3)
Where to start with James M. Connor
Watchmen is the easiest place to see him and the quickest demonstration of what he does, because playing a real public figure gives you nowhere to hide. Follow it with About Schmidt and Blades of Glory, two very different comedies that hire him for the same thing: a small, faintly irritated man standing at the edge of someone else's crisis.
Vice Principals gives him the most room of anything here, and Kong: Skull Island uses only the voice, which is arguably his best instrument anyway. Completists should double back to Futureworld for the 1976 debut and forward to Buffaloed for recent work. None of this adds up to a leading man's filmography, and that is rather the point of the page: this is what a genuinely long working career looks like from the inside.