Raúl Castillo

Castillo wrote plays before he acted on screen, and he was born in McAllen, down on the Texas border, which turns out to matter for the shape of the career that followed. His early screen work was small and independent, Amexicano and Cold Weather among it, and then HBO's Looking cast him as Richie Donado Ventura in 2014.

Richie is still the best thing he has done. The show gave him a character who is more emotionally literate than the men around him, and Castillo played it without ever tipping into saintliness, which is the trap that role sets. He returned for Looking: The Movie, and picked up an Independent Spirit nomination for We the Animals shortly after, though that film is not among the credits listed here.

Since then he has done two jobs at once. In studio genre pictures he is reliably the most human element on screen: Mikey Guzman in Army of the Dead, Sam in Wrath of Man, Darius in Smile 2, a cop in Knives Out, and Night Teeth and Mother/Android besides. In independent film he gets the actual parts, The Inspection, Cassandro, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Little Fish.

The television has kept pace too, with Nick on Atypical, Seven Seconds, Class of '09 and, most recently, Cliff Broward on Task. He is at the stage where the good directors have noticed and the big ones are still using him as texture.