Scott Grimes
Scott Grimes is an actor, born 1971.
He started as a kid in monster movies. Grimes played Brad Brown in Critters and its first sequel in the late 1980s, plus a pair of 1984 Christmas television films, and unlike most child actors of that vintage he simply kept working, without a comeback narrative or a wilderness decade.
What he does is fill out ensembles, which sounds like faint praise and is not. Party of Five used him as Will McCorkle, ER kept him for years as Archie Morris, a doctor who begins as an irritant and is quietly allowed to become competent, and Band of Brothers cast him as Donald Malarkey, one of the real soldiers whose war the series follows. That last one is the best straight dramatic work he has done and it is the credit that shows what he is capable of when a production trusts him with the weight.
Since then he has spent most of his career inside one creative orbit: Steve Smith on American Dad! since 2005, Gordon Malloy on The Orville from 2017 to 2022, and Matty Bennett on Ted. Three long-running Seth MacFarlane shows is either loyalty or typecasting, and given how much comic latitude Malloy gets it looks like the former. He also sings, seriously enough that it is part of how he is billed, and turns up in films in small sharp parts: Will Scarlet in Robin Hood, Birdie Burns in Mystery, Alaska, a counsel in Oppenheimer.
Movies (10)
TV (9)
Where to start with Scott Grimes
Go to Band of Brothers first. It is the best thing he has been in and the performance that answers the question of whether the comedy guy can do the other job. Malarkey is a real person and Grimes plays him without any actorly pleading.
After that, The Orville is the fullest use of his comic register, since Gordon starts as the joke and is gradually written into the show's heart, and American Dad! is twenty years of vocal work most viewers never connect to his face.
ER is the long haul, worth dipping into around his later seasons when Morris has stopped being a punchline. Critters is the origin story and a perfectly good creature feature. Party of Five and ted are for completists, and Oppenheimer is a small part in a great film rather than a reason to watch it.