CHARACTER Prologue

Whatever makes an actor right for a role, Margery Simkin knows it when she sees it. She’s the casting director behind some of the most iconic original films and Hollywood characters from the last fifty years, including TOP GUN, FIELD OF DREAMS and BEVERLY HILLS COP, plus the more recent hits ERIN BROKOVICH and AVATAR, and one of our favorite indies, BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. In our season finale episode, Margery shares some trade secrets from her forty+ year career, debunks a few casting myths, and sums up her job as a mix of discernment, tenacity and serendipity: “I love problem solving… and I guess I’m arrogant enough to think I get it right a lot of the time! It’s just fun.”

Joe Pantoliano has the secret to immortality: work constantly for decades despite dyslexia and depression to become a beloved character actor who plays unforgettable roles in iconic movies. Simple as that. You know him from RISKY BUSINESS, THE GOONIES, MIDNIGHT RUN, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, MEMENTO, THE FUGITIVE and THE MATRIX to name only a few. (He’s got “another 180 that nobody’s ever heard of!”) Then there was that Emmy he won for playing a despicable mob captain on two seasons of The Sopranos. Joe cut and ran from his native New Jersey after high school and turned his own fortunes in Hollywood by making every character memorable: “I never had the luxury of saying I made it, hey I’m here. Each job was the last job, then I had to get the next one.”

“Brutus… the way Captain Kirk would do it.”  Lance Reddick performs the Shakespeare monologue he memorized for a high school homework assignment that made him want to be an actor.  The star of HBO’s The Wire also speaks his mind on the show’s true legacy, sounds off on his big scene in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI that was cut from the film, and dishes on taking direction from “a stunt guy” in the JOHN WICK films.  Lance brings unforgettable gravitas to every role he plays.  His method?  Grounding his characters in reality and “just trusting the words”

Alanna Ubach is a master at finding humor in the drama of being alive.  She’s a freakishly versatile actor who looks for something to love in every character she plays, from a real Fox News personality in BOMBSHELL to a raunchy sidekick in Bravo’s “Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce”.  Her fictional roles are full of truth, from her cartoonish Latina housekeeper in MEET THE FOCKERS to the soulful animated grandmother she plays in Disney-Pixar’s Oscar-winner COCO.  We talk to the Los Angeles native about the course of her career (so far) starting with learning to act as a kid by mimicking her father’s Mexican accent, through “standing up for a piece of humanity” as she sums up her job now.

Imagination and instinct--Tom Skerritt insists that's as much of a formula as any actor needs to tell a good story. For the astonishing sixty years that he's been performing on screen, Tom has drawn from his own life experience to embody some of film history's most iconic characters, from Captain Dallas in ALIEN and TOP GUN's Commander Mike "Viper" Metcalf, to the Reverend Maclean in A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT. Now at age 88, as Tom looks back on these and two of his most recent roles--a wizened Marine in our beloved LUCKY and his first feature lead in EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS--this Midwestern kid swears he's still pulling from within: "It's just all what I've learned in life."

From growing up on stage in the deep south to “falling between the cracks” of Hollywood types, Dale Dickey worked odd jobs for decades before coming into her own as one of film and television’s most beloved supporting actresses—a label she embraces as her “calling card”.  We delve into her roles in WINTER’S BONE and HELL OR HIGH WATER, plus the Netflix series Unbelievable and AMC’s Breaking Bad, and Dale’s take on new standards, from self-taped auditions to beauty on screen:  “We’ll always have the work and the glamour, but the stories are changing.”

A quiet middle child who “tripped and fell” into acting reveals some of his Emmy Award-winning trade secrets, from why he gave away his most iconic character’s monologues to co-stars, to the audition technique that got him cast by David Fincher.  In this episode we talk with actor Richard Schiff about his roles in the films SE7EN, CLEMENCY and THE AUTOMATIC HATE, as well as the series Relativity and The West Wing, and how honesty has shaped his career from the start: “It’s always gotten me in trouble as much as it has gotten me success.”

A boy from London talks transformation, embracing villainy and putting Robert DeNiro in a choke hold.  In our first episode Olivier Award-winning actor Mark Strong opens up about the reality of chucking a practical path for a life in performance, how to rock a turtleneck and why he sees the term "character actor" as a compliment.  We talk about Mark's roles in BODY OF LIES, ZERO DARK THIRTY, STARDUST and 1917 and his layering process for building the parts he plays. "I just get such a buzz out of creating a character that is not me."

Allow us to introduce ourselves and our show.  We'll keep it short.  Spoiler alert: one of your hosts gets thrown off a studio lot and the other gets recruited by an ex-nun.