Matthew Glave

One role does most of the public work here. Glenn Gulia in The Wedding Singer is the fiance the film gives you permission to loathe, and Glave plays him with a complete absence of self-doubt that makes the loathing easy and the comedy work. It is also the least representative thing on his CV, because almost nowhere else is he the problem.

The rest of the career is authority, delivered fast and without fuss. Colonel Charles W. Scott in Argo. Chuck Yeager in First Man. Howard Cosell in Big George Foreman. Two governors, in All the Way and in The Thinning and its sequel. A senator in Perception. Coaches in The Way Back and Safety. A lieutenant colonel in Army Wives, a deputy in Picket Fences, an officer and a principal in a long line of network hours. This is the actor a production hires when a scene needs ninety seconds of credible man in a uniform so the story can keep moving, and doing that convincingly for more than thirty years is a harder trick than the credits make it look.

Television has been the steadier employer: recurring runs on Picket Fences, ER, Charmed, Stargate SG-1, Army Wives, Angie Tribeca, The Mick and The Rookie, where he plays Oscar Hutchinson. Nobody books Matthew Glave to be the most interesting person in the room. They book him so the room is believable, and the work is still arriving.