Jerry Lambert

Most people who recognise Jerry Lambert's face know it from advertising. He has worked for decades as a commercial and voiceover actor, appearing for GEICO, Holiday Inn and Bridgestone, and his best-known character never appeared in a film: Kevin Butler, the fictional Sony executive the company built a long campaign around, a corporate spokesman who carried himself like a self-satisfied action hero. He fronted campaigns for the Canadian chain Boston Pizza as well.

The screen credits are what a busy Los Angeles character actor's record actually looks like. Two or three scenes at a time, usually as an authority figure with no real authority: a principal, a client, a boss, somebody's father. He recurred as Principal Ablin on American Housewife, appeared in Sons & Daughters and Neighbors from Hell, and turned up across Everybody Loves Raymond, 'Til Death, Life in Pieces, The Odd Couple and Graves. None of it adds up to a signature part, and that is the honest shape of the job.

One credit sits outside the pattern. In the television film 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out he plays Randy Wills, one of the officers in a dramatisation of a real Los Angeles gun battle, and it is the only thing here that asks him to be frightened rather than amusing. Born in Shelton, Washington in 1957.