Five Underrated Character Actors and FOJ

It’s difficult to define the term "character actor." Even those of us who have played leading roles spend the majority of our time playing "character roles," especially in film and tv. These roles often give an actor one to two scenes in an episode or film, and is in particular the kind of work that actors who don’t live in Los Angeles or New York book when series are filming on location.

Below is a list of five actors I’ve had the privilege to call my friend at one point or another. The breadth of their careers is diverse, so I have listed them in no particular order.

5. Michael Greyeyes (Fear the Walking Dead, True Detective, The New World). M.F.A., Kent St., Founder of Signal Theatre, Associate Professor of Theatre, York University.
Michael has been acting since the mid 80’s and in recent years has drawn more mainstream attention and critical acclaim for his work. He steals every scene he appears in during Season three of True Detective (HBO). You can read his full bio on Wikipedia: the breadth of his work and training is far and wide.

I don’t think I’ve spoken to Michael in more than 10 years, but I got to know him a little bit when I was living in Toronto and a friend of mine was his teaching assistant for his Creative Ensemble class at York University. He had just finished filming The New World and was generous in sharing his experiences working with Terrence Malick, and even gave me a copy of the script.

I am glad to see all of his success and wish him nothing but the best.

4. Rutherford ‘Ruddy’ Cravens (Get Out, No Country for Old Men, Preacher, Breaking Bad). Regular performer at Main Street Theater Houston, Shakespeare Teaching Artist, Guest Director at Lamar University.
Ruddy Cravens showed up on the Lamar campus in 2016 to direct Romeo & Juliet right off the set of Get Out, with a full fu man chu beard. I assumed, based on his appearance, that the movie was a comedy, and I learned a very valuable lesson: don’t assume.

I’ve known Ruddy for ten years and he is one of my favorite people in the world. He threw me curveball after curveball in Wolf Hall Parts 1 and 2 and occasionally forgot to give me my beer in our scene in Peace in Our Time (both at Main Street Theater Houston), but he is one of the toughest actors to keep up with because he fills every scene with so much life. Beyond this, he is a genuine, caring person who, among other things, has coached my students for free to help them get started as professional actors. Ruddy is too humble to appreciate the depths of his film work, and he is one of the best character actors in the south.

3. Richard Warner (Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Homicide: Life of the Street) Professor Emeritus, The University of Virginia, Co-Founder: Arvold/ Warner Studios. M.F.A., Catholic University.
Richard Warner came to Lamar to perform in The Vertical Hour a few years back to fulfill an idea the two of us had been working on for almost 10 years. Aside from being my acting teacher for three years at UVA (part of more than 30 years of outstanding teaching at the University level), Richard is also an accomplished character actor, a recognized regional theater actor and one of my best friends in the world.

Richard has recently moved back to New York and is working with the amazing Erica Arvold prepping actors for auditions and helping the South –particularly the Atlanta area – cultivate the best character actors in America.

Richard gained some much deserved notoriety for his role in Lincoln, cast as a regional character actor in Virginia at the time, but ultimately, it was a small recognition for an incredible body of work over more than 40 years.

2. Jim Gleason (The Butler, Grey’s Anatomy, Fantastic Four, Ozark) Owner and Proprietor, The Working Actors’ Studio, New Orleans, LA.
My students at Lamar know how much I am a fan of Jim Gleason: I talk about him in class a lot. I’ve also brought him to campus to work with them twice, so they’ve seen first hand how good a teacher, how genuine a human being and how good an actor he is. Some think it is an overstatement that one of the main reasons season 3 of Ozark wasn’t very strong was because they accelerated through Jim’s character’s subplot. I would argue that is one of the main reasons season 3 is not as strong: they did not bring back one of the series best characters and best character actors. 

I met Jim about 10 years ago in New Orleans and have been taking classes with him on and off ever since. He brings his years of Los Angeles experience to Louisiana (where he is originally from) and is an incredible resource to us in the South, especially in Louisiana and Texas. His classes have revolutionized my approach to acting, as well as teaching acting.

1. Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (The CHI, The Knick, Blood Diamond, Treme). M.F.A., NYU Tiesch School of the Arts.

I met Ntare for the first time at the University of Virginia in 2005 when he was performing his powerhouse one man show Biro. It remains one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen. I was able to re-connect with Ntare in the Summer of 2006 and help him produce Biro at the World AIDS conference in Toronto, where the person the story was based on went public with their story for the first time. 

I have kept in touch with Ntare over the years, mostly through Facebook. His career was just taking off when Biro was performed in 2005 and 2006, and he propelled the success of the show into a host of tv and film credits, eventually becoming a regular on Treme and The Knick and moving forward as one of the anchoring characters on the hit Showtime series The CHI. 

Ntare is a global citizen - as the Cultural Ambassador for Uganda - and beyond this he is probably the greatest actor I’ve ever worked with. But beyond his talents, he is tenacious, humble and kind to a fault.