Jeff Doucette

Before the screen work there was a stage act: he toured for years with Ernst Emling as the comedy duo Jeff and Ernst, and he has written two plays. That background shows in the shape of the career that followed, which is a working comedian's rather than a leading man's. The screen record here starts in 1978 with Fairy Tales and settles quickly into the American sitcom rotation of the early eighties, Bosom Buddies and Newhart among them.

Read the character names on this page and the job description writes itself: Junior, Olin, Dale, Coach, Gus, Bus Driver, Mean Guard, Homeless Man, Janitor Bob, Captain Destroyer. He is the actor hired to make one scene work and then leave, and there are more than ninety films and shows behind him doing exactly that. Splash, That '70s Show, Better Off Ted, Girl Meets World, Alien Nation, The Best of Times: the parts are small, the timing is reliable, and the sitcom audience laughs on cue.

The other half is voice work, which he has done for cartoons and commercials for decades, including a long-running turn as Benjamin Franklin in advertising. Possum in Doctor Dolittle, Thumbskull in Ben 10 and Smeck in God, the Devil and Bob sit alongside the later European animated features, where the credit fields show him doing three parts in one picture: a judge and a Rusty in Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness, three separate voices in The Son of Bigfoot. The straightest thing on the page is Senator Eastland in All the Way, and it is worth seeing him play something with no joke attached.