Malcolm Stewart

Malcolm Stewart is a Montreal-born actor who trained on the American east coast, at the University of Vermont and then Columbia's graduate school, and made his Broadway debut in Dracula opposite Frank Langella. Bedroom Farce and Torch Song Trilogy followed. He is also a licensed pilot, which is the sort of detail that surfaces in a biography precisely because the screen career resists summary.

That career is the working character actor's, much of it shot in British Columbia, and there is real craft in it. He is the doctor, the lawyer, the bank manager, the technician: the man who delivers the information the plot needs and then leaves the room without fuss. He is Jim Shepherd in Jumanji, Dr. Sacks in an early X-Files, an unnamed technician in Moon, Nelson in Timecop, Mr. Remora in A Series of Unfortunate Events, and a recurring face in Riverdale. In Best in Show he is credited, pleasingly, as Malcolm.

The last fifteen years have leaned heavily on television movies, a lot of them festive: Joe Shaw across two Christmas in Evergreen films, plus a steady run of made-for-television romances. It is unglamorous work and it is a living, and he is good enough at it that the same producers keep calling. If you want to watch him carry a scene rather than service one, the science fiction anthologies of the 1990s are the place to look, since an episode of that kind can hand a character actor a whole part instead of a function.