Brad Hunt
Brad Hunt is an actor.
Brad Hunt came out of Moberly, Missouri, into a lane American film keeps deliberately narrow: the intense supporting man in independent pictures and genre thrillers. His breakout was Dream with the Fishes in 1997, which is not among the credits listed here, and his best festival result came for the psychological thriller Cookers, which won him Best Actor at Screamfest.
The credits here map the working reality of that kind of career. There is one canonical film, Magnolia, where he plays Craig Hansen inside an enormous ensemble. There are studio pictures that use him as texture: a guard in Mulholland Falls, a private in Hart's War, Orin Hanner Jr in Fire Down Below. And there is a long tail of low-budget horror and thrillers, The Tripper, The Plague, The Ghost, where the parts get bigger as the films get smaller.
He is also a singer-songwriter who fronted a Los Angeles punk-country band, and he splits his time between Los Angeles and rural Missouri, where he works with wild mustangs. That reads like press-kit colour but it also explains the shape of the filmography. This is not the resume of somebody who has been chasing volume.
Movies (12)
TV (1)
Where to start with Brad Hunt
Magnolia first, for the obvious reason: it is the best film he appears in, and Craig Hansen is one of the threads Paul Thomas Anderson pulls tightest. He is one part of a very large cast, so watch it as a film rather than as a showcase.
Cookers is the one to see for his acting. It is a low-budget psychological thriller that won him a festival Best Actor prize, and it asks more of him than anything else on this list.
After that, Hart's War and Fire Down Below are the studio jobs, watchable and undemanding. Cherish is the sweetest film here. The Tripper is a very silly slasher wearing a political costume, and The Bridge gives him a memorable television turn as a character billed only as The Chopper.