Teddy Sears
Teddy Sears is an actor, born 1977.
There is a face American television keeps in stock: tall, clean-jawed, plausible in a suit, the man you cast as the doctor or the prosecutor or the husband before the show tells you what he actually is. Sears has that face, and he has spent more than twenty years making the typecasting work for him instead of against him.
His most-cited roles all live in the gap between surface and substance. Richard Patrick Woolsley on the legal drama Raising the Bar is the polished half of the courtroom. Patrick in the first season of American Horror Story is one of the house's previous owners. Dr. Austin Langham on Masters of Sex is the smooth, faithless colleague, and it is his best sustained work, because the show lets the charm curdle slowly rather than in one scene. Then The Flash cast him as Jay Garrick, a role built entirely on what an audience assumes about a decent-looking man in a helmet.
Around those sits the working actor's resume, which is nothing to apologise for: a suburban neighbour in A Single Man, a detective in 666 Park Avenue, a bit part in Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a supporting turn in The Politician, a bruiser's voice in Justice League: Warworld, and a doctor again on Brilliant Minds. He is rarely the reason a show exists and frequently the reason a scene works.
Movies (8)
TV (15)
- The Flash (2014)
- Masters of Sex (2013)
- Torchwood (2006)
- Brilliant Minds (2024)
- Raising the Bar (2008)
- The Defenders (2010)
- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006)
- Samantha Who? (2007)
- 24: Legacy (2017)
- The Politician (2019)
- Justice (2006)
- Necessary Roughness (2011)
- Carpoolers (2007)
- Raines (2007)
- 666 Park Avenue (2012)
Where to start with Teddy Sears
Take Masters of Sex first. Austin Langham begins as a supporting comic figure and turns into a real study of a man whose confidence is his entire method, and Sears plays the deflation beautifully.
After that, The Flash is the entertaining watch. Jay Garrick is a deliberate piece of casting and a whole season is built around what you make of him, which is more fun than most superhero television gives a guest lead.
The rest is a good map of a reliable career. A Single Man uses him briefly and precisely as a 1960s neighbour, Raising the Bar is the straight-ahead legal drama that first got him regular work, and 24: Legacy and The Politician are the sort of jobs a dependable television actor collects between leads. Justice League: Warworld is a curiosity for animation fans; he has a good voice for a heavy.
Trust him at your own risk
The performances built entirely on seeming reliable. The Flash is the best-executed version and the whole second-season arc depends on the audience taking him at face value, which is exactly what he is for.
Prestige and period television
The better-written series, where he is usually the handsome problem in someone else's storyline. Studio 60 and The Politician are both Sorkin-adjacent in their density of dialogue, and Torchwood is the outlier.
Film credits, big and small
The features, which are fewer and stranger. A Single Man is by a distance the most beautiful thing on the list, and Justice League: Warworld is the animated one his comic audience will want.