Paul Raci

Paul Raci spent more than thirty years being credited by function. In Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story he is Bad Guy. In The Glimmer Man he is Internal Affairs Agent Number One. In Rent-a-Cop he is a waiter. He worked steadily in Chicago theatre, including Children of a Lesser God, did voices on the original Aeon Flux shorts as Onan and Tweeka, and took whatever television came along.

Then Sound of Metal. Raci plays Joe, and the performance is the opposite of what a late breakthrough usually looks like: no big speech, no visible technique, a man listening carefully and telling the truth slowly. It brought an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor when Raci was in his early seventies.

What the nomination changed was the size of the parts, not the approach. He was Lydell McCutcheon in Perry Mason, McDonald in Butcher's Crossing, Brent Buell in Sing Sing, Jons in The Mother, a group leader in This Is Me...Now. He is still doing the same thing he was doing in the small roles: arriving in a scene with an entire history already in place and declining to explain any of it. Character actors who wait that long for a real part often overplay when it finally comes. Raci did the reverse, which is why directors keep calling.