Stephen Kunken
Stephen Kunken is an actor, born 1971.
Stephen Kunken was born in Upper Brookville, New York in 1971 and trained at Juilliard, graduating with top honors. He built a theatre career first: seven Broadway productions plus a long run of off-Broadway and regional work. His most celebrated stage role is Andy Fastow in Enron, which brought a Tony nomination for Featured Actor in a Play. Frost/Nixon and Rock 'n' Roll are also on the list.
His screen career is almost entirely institutional men. Kunken specialises in the person whose authority comes from a rulebook rather than from himself, and he is precise about that difference: the deference, the small pleasure in a procedure, the willingness to be the least popular person in the meeting. Jerry Fogel in The Wolf of Wall Street, William Tompkins in Bridge of Spies, Dr. Benjamin in Still Alice and Baumen in Jason Bourne are variations on one species of man in four different rooms.
Two roles are the exceptions worth the page. Ari Spyros in Billions is the compliance officer every other character despises, and Kunken plays him with an unembarrassed enjoyment of being disliked that makes him funnier and more durable than most of the leads. Commander Warren Putnam in The Handmaid's Tale is the far end of the same idea: a man given power by a system and no character of his own, played without any attempt to soften him.
He also played James Jesus Angleton, the real head of CIA counterintelligence, in A Spy Among Friends.
Movies (12)
TV (8)
Where to start with Stephen Kunken
Billions is the showcase and you can start almost anywhere in it. Ari Spyros exists to be resented by every other character, and Kunken makes that fun rather than tiresome by playing a man who has decided he would rather be effective than liked.
The Handmaid's Tale is the harder watch and the better performance, because he refuses to give Putnam any redeeming interior life whatsoever.
A Spy Among Friends is the one to seek out if you want him with real material: a genuine historical spymaster, and he gets to be paranoid, brilliant and wrong.
The film work is smaller. The Wolf of Wall Street and Bridge of Spies are single-scene appearances done exactly right, and Still Alice hands him one of the hardest things an actor can be given, which is a doctor delivering news that ends a life as the patient understood it.