Andrew Patrick Ralston
Andrew Patrick Ralston is an actor, born 1973.
Ralston does a specific job: he is a working character actor, and the credits show what that career looks like from outside. Born in Missouri, raised in Arizona and Kansas, he has been on screen since an uncredited bit in Kansas City in 1996, and he has spent the years since holding scenes together while somebody else has the moment. A tour leader in Adam, a homeless man in Horse Girl, Captain Woodcock in The Hyperions, Jim McNeile in the Lethal Weapon series, Dr. Saul Faerstein on The People v. O. J. Simpson, Chip Baggins on Life in Pieces, Sherpa Allen on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He has also done more than fifty national commercials, which is how a great deal of this work actually gets paid for.
The credit that changed his profile is Nope, where he appears in the Gordy's Home sequence as Tom Bogan, the actor playing Brett Houston. It is a small part inside one of the most discussed passages in any Jordan Peele film, and it is exactly the kind of thing that turns a jobbing actor into a name people look up afterwards.
Movies (5)
TV (2)
Where to start with Andrew Patrick Ralston
Nope is why you are here, and the Gordy's Home sequence is worth watching for its craft alone: the whole thing depends on the actors selling a cheerful studio sitcom from the inside, and Ralston plays it completely straight.
After that, Lethal Weapon is where he has the most screen time, in a network procedural that is better than it needed to be. The Hyperions gives him a bigger role in a much smaller film, and Horse Girl and Adam are the independent dramas where he does the quiet, ordinary work that fills out a world.
Side Quest is the most recent thing on the list, and Kansas City is the uncredited starting point three decades back, included here for the archaeology rather than the performance.