Murray Bartlett

Murray Bartlett worked for two decades before the part that made him famous. He was D.K. on Farscape in the late nineties, spent time in Australian television including headLand, then moved to the United States, where Looking cast him as Dom Basaluzzo and gave him the best material of his career to that point. The show ran two seasons and a wrap-up film and was cancelled before it was properly appreciated.

The White Lotus changed the arithmetic. As Armond, the resort manager holding a professional smile in place while everything behind it gives way, Bartlett won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. The performance works because he plays the customer service voice as a physical effort and lets you watch the cost of maintaining it.

He has been playing versions of that man ever since, and playing them well: Nick De Noia in Welcome to Chippendales, and Frank in the Long, Long Time episode of The Last of Us, both of which brought Emmy nominations, plus Vinnie Green in Physical, an infomercial guru whose entire personality is a sales pitch. That Last of Us episode is not among the credits listed here. Elsewhere he was Michael Tolliver in Tales of the City and Brian Tumkin in Nine Perfect Strangers, and the recent films run stranger: Stan Sullivan in Opus, Plutonovich in O'Dessa, The Leper in The Death of Robin Hood.