That Guy From That Thing: The 2010s Edition
Because 'vaguely recognisable' is not enough.
Cutout from the movie poster of 'That Guy...Who Was In That Thing'
1.
A lot of big stars spend decades or more being That Guy From That Thing, a vaguely recognisable face that plays the sixth-largest role in five films a year and always dies before the end, sometimes off-screen. You can’t quite name them, but you like them, and you wave your fingers around for a bit trying to place where you’ve seen them before.
Steve Buscemi was TGFTT for years, as were Samuel L Jackson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H Macy—it only takes one breakthrough role for them to become household names, and all their previous films to be rereleased on DVD with their name suddenly massive on the cover. Here’s our pick of current-day That Guy (or Girl) From That Things, that are one good project away from you having always been a fan.
2.Adeel Akhtar
What you've seen him in: Four Lions, The Dictator, The Angelos Epithemiou Show, Utopia.
Adeel Akhtar is relatively new to the scene, but he's made an impact, mostly in the 'being-really-hilarious' department. He's particularly funny as Gupta (“Just for the sheer bloody fuck-offness of it, innit”), AngelosEpithemiou'sgormless sidekick in, erm, The Angelos Epithemiou Show. In fact, he's so good at that character, it's actually the second time he's played it – the first time was in Four Lions, but he was called Faisal in that one. But don't let that lure you into thinking he's a one-trick pony—he’s played a 'proper' role in Utopia, in which he had the misfortune to lose an eyeball. Not in real life though, he's no Christian Bale.
What we'd like to see him in: If we could somehow have a movie spin-off featuring Gupta as the main character, that would be dandy. It could last five hours and we'd still watch it.
3.Will Forte
What you've seen him in: MacGruber, Rock Of Ages, That's My Boy, The Watch, Grown Ups 2, Nebraska.
Will Forte is hilarious. He's also a bonafide leading man, and he proved it in MacGruber, which was excellent. However, nobody anyone anywhere saw that for some reason, so he hasn't really had the chance to do it again since. Either way, and luckily for us, he still pops up in a tonne of things, usually in a comedic capacity (main reason being he's really really funny). However, not content with mugging to the camera and shoving a stick of celery up his arse (see: MacGruber), he's also had a go at 'serious' acting of late. Look to Nebraska for proof, in which he gave a critically acclaimed performance without any vegetables up his nether regions.
What we'd like to see him in: We're on a sequel hype again—another MacGruber please!
4.Cam Gigandet
What you've seen him in: Easy A, Priest, Trespass, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.
Cam Gigandet gets a bit of a bad rep—a lot of people want to punch him. Maybe it's always because he's got a bit of a smug face on him, who knows. Either way, he's not a bad actor by any means—just check out Never Back Down for proof. Yes, he's playing a smug bastard whom a lot of people want to punch, but he's playing it well. He's not really been the star player in a big movie yet, as he's often relegated to the 'boyfriend' role, but he's done bad guy very well on numerous occasions, so that might be something to concentrate on. Also, girls fancy him—maybe it's time to go the rom-com route, rather than the 'sex-addict-whose-penis-detaches-from-his-body-and-assumes-human-form' route, which he absolutely did with this year's Bad Johnson.
What we'd like to see him in: Another sequel to Never Back Down (yes there already is one, AND it's good, but another one wouldn't hurt).
5.Bill Hader
What you’ve seen him in: Hot Rod, Tropic Thunder, Superbad
A more familiar face in the States, where he was a staple cast member on Saturday Night Live for eight years, Bill Hader has been mainly seen on the big screen in comedies with a bunch of best friend roles for the main character to explain the plot to. He does a great job, but is capable of so much more—and we’d happily watch a whole film about his character in Hot Rod (which is AMAZING, and if you haven’t seen it, do everything in your power to watch it TODAY). Pre-SNL, Hader worked behind the scenes in Hollywood, and was a production assistant on The Scorpion King and Collateral Damage, and more recently he’s been a writer on South Park. His first lead role, in The Skeleton Twins alongside fellow SNL veteran Kristen Wiig, just came out Stateside.
What we’d like to see him in: Either a Vincent Price biopic (his impression is incredible) or a buddy comedy with either The Rock or Arnold Schwarzenegger where at one point it goes all meta and they talk about him having the shittest job on set of both of their worst films.
6.Kathryn Hahn
What you've seen her in: Wanderlust, The Dictator, We're The Millers, Bad Words, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.
Ever since we saw her in Anchorman, we knew Kathryn Hahn would be one to watch. Since 2010, she's really hit her stride, appearing in an unending list of comedies and putting in hilariously memorable turns in each one (quite often stealing the show from under the main star). Her most memorable role is probably of the nymphomaniac wife of Adam Scott who develops an unlikely attraction towards John C Reilly in Step Brothers. She's done leading lady too, in the indie drama Afternoon Delight – that, coupled with the huge list of upcoming film projects on her slate, shows that, in the words of D Ream, her career can only get better.*
*Not the words of D Ream.
What we'd like to see her in: A stupid comedy where she's the main character and Will Ferrell is the supporting one.
7.Brie Larson
What you've seen her in: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Rampart, 21 Jump Street, Don Jon, The Spectacular Now.
Chances are, particularly if you're male, you'll have fallen in love with Brie Larson at some point in your life. Her role of choice often seems to be the quirky girl-next-door or cool-as-fuck daughter and she's better at that than anyone else on the scene at the moment. She mostly stars in comedy films, but you can catch her in more serious fare like Rampart or Short Term 12. In the latter, she played the main character, so hers is not a career destined to reside on the supporting end of the spectrum, and hopefully as her popularity rises, so will the quality of her roles.
What we'd like to see her in: A film where she plays the cool-as-fuck yet quirky daughter who lives next door. Or a remake of anything with Phoebe Cates in.
8.Adrianne Palicki
What you’ve seen her in: GI Joe: Retaliation, Friday Night Lights, Red Dawn, Legion
One of the best bits in GI Joe: Retaliation involves Adrianne Palicki wearing a dress. A) It’s not that good a film, and B) she wears the absolute hell out of that dress. She’s had a bit of an unlucky career so far, appearing in a bunch of failed pilots (including Aquaman, a Lost In Space remake produced by John Woo and in the title role of a Wonder Woman reboot put together by David E Kelley, the guy behind Ally McBeal) and dying in the first episode of Supernatural. The troubled remake of Red Dawn sat on a shelf for two years, and the less said about Legion the better (it’s rubbish—have we said too much?). But she’s in the upcoming Keanu Reeves hitman flick John Wick, which is said to be awesome, so that could propel her towards leading roles where you’re slightly jealous of the people she beats up because at least they got to meet her.
What we’d like to see her in: A Wonder Woman show that wasn’t put together by the guy that did Ally Mcfucking Beal might be a start. Or an ace Haywire-style ass-kicker. Or, a gender-swapped remake of everything Jason Statham’s ever been in.
9.Barry Pepper
What you’ve seen him in: Battlefield Earth, True Grit, The Lone Ranger, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, Snitch
Ah, Barry. At one point it looked like Barry Pepper was going to be a massive star—he was cool as hell in Saving Private Ryan and was in great That Guy From That Thing form in Enemy Of The State and The Green Mile. It was certainly nothing to be sneezed at, which is a pepper joke. Then he starred in Battlefield Earth, the shittest shit ever shitted. It was one of the crappest films ever made, and it looked like Pepper’s career had been bid achoo (that’s another pepper joke—like combining the word “adieu”, meaning “goodbye”, with the sound of sneezing). But the last few years he’s been popping up again in interesting roles in interesting films—he was one of the less bad things in The Lone Ranger, did a fine job in True Grit, and nearly stole Snitch from co-star The Rock with his truly amazing nostril/beard combo.
What we’d like to see him in: If they hadn’t just made a John Carter film two years ago, he’d have made a great one. Otherwise, anything where he can talk like a cowboy and shoot a sniper rifle, as he does both of those things about as well as anyone else does.
10.Patrick Wilson
What you’ve seen him in: Hard Candy, Watchmen, Insidious, Insidious 2, The Conjuring
One of those dudes with a face that rings a bell and a name that plays a drum (NB this is a joke about him having the same name as the drummer from Weezer, which when we really think about it isn’t a joke really), Patrick Wilson started out as a Broadway song and dance man before breaking into film—appropriately, one of his first roles was in the Hollywood version of The Phantom Of The Opera. Since then he’s covered all kinds of bases in his roles, from all-American suburban dude (Young Adult) to all-American suburban dude with a secret (Insidious, Hard Candy, Insidious 2, Little Children) to real-life All-American suburban dude (The Conjuring). He was good as Nite Owl in Watchmen, and was the baddie in the A-Team, but nobody remembers anything from that film other than Sharlto Copley. Wilson has a bunch of lead roles coming up, including playing a bisexual space station captain in Space Station ‘76 (that immediately sounds amazing), and the title role in Stretch, directed by The A-Team’s Joe Carnahan.
What we’d like to see him in: He seems like he’d do an awesome job as the Bradley Cooper straight-man figure anchoring some sort of wacky-ass ensemble comedy. Like a thing where he’s an accountant that gets sent to prison and shares a cell with a ventriloquist and a wrestler and they try to break out to save an orphanage. Something good like that.
11.Benedict Wong
What you’ve seen him in: Prometheus, Sunshine, Kick-Ass 2, 15 Stories High, Hummingbird, Dirty Pretty Things
The film industry doesn’t seem to know what to do with Benedict Wong. He’s from Eccles, but keeps being given parts where he has a thick Chinese accent and then either gets the shit kicked out of him by the hero or (double spoiler alert) dies largely unmourned in space. It’s a massive shame, as he’s a fantastic actor—he’s great in Dirty Pretty Things, and always does what he can with the crap parts they let him do in bigger films. He’s fared better on the small screen—his performance in Sean Lock’s sitcom 15 Stories High is strange and incredible, and he’s cropped up in a bunch of dramas. He’s playing Kublai Khan in a Netflix series about Marco Polo that comes out in December, which unless they’ve played really fast and loose with history will at least not see him dying in space this time.
What we’d like to see him in: The Marco Polo thing sounds quite promising, but think how good a Doctor Who he could be when Peter Capaldi packs it in. Loads of doctors are Chinese.