Character Actors

An inspiring piece for those of us that are termed "Character Actors" from the NY Times, a piece on Dan Fogler - the Tony Award winning actor from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

"It’s a showbiz truism that character actors don’t work much until they’re 35. For about 15 years after drama school, as their “traditionally beautiful” pals get snapped up for movies and television, the “interesting” and “off-center” types are lucky if they find voice-over work as marmosets. Even onstage no one wants a less than Olympian romantic lead. But after sufficient seasoning and suffering, the received wisdom goes, character actors will have grown into their oddness just as their ingénue colleagues are starting to stockpile Botox. If they haven’t in the meantime become social workers, they will suddenly find plenty of fulfilling work playing sidekicks, frumps and creeps. Plus some Chekhov.

That was the career that Dan Fogler assumed he’d have when, as a new student at the School of Theater at Boston University, he was given the diagnosis of “character actor,” as if it were mumps. A chubby, nasal, duckwalking boy with crazy hair, he wasn’t really surprised by the news. And he wasn’t really insulted either. " Link