Curtis Armstrong

Curtis Armstrong turned up in Risky Business in 1983 as Miles Dalby, the friend whose advice sets the plot in motion, and a year later he was Booger in Revenge of the Nerds. Both parts perform the same function at different volumes, and he played the second one four times, through 1987, 1992 and 1994.

It worked because he committed without apologising. Booger is built entirely out of things a 1984 studio comedy thought were funny, and Armstrong plays him as though the man has a coherent inner life, which is considerably more than the writing gave him. Moonlighting hired him in 1985 as Herbert Viola, and Charles De Mar in Better Off Dead the same year is probably the funniest thing he has ever done.

The pivot came in 2004 with Ray, where he plays the record producer Ahmet Ertegun, a real person, straight, in a serious biographical film. Nothing in four Nerds films predicts that he could do it.

Since then he has been steadily employed in two lanes. There are the comic authority figures: Mr. Ralph in DodgeBall, Principal Foster on New Girl, Mr. Welch in Akeelah and the Bee, the campus cop in National Lampoon's Van Wilder, Mr. O'Donnell in American Pie Presents: The Book of Love. And there is the voice work: Snot on American Dad!, Maru in Planes: Fire & Rescue, Mr. Crummyham on Monsters at Work. Supernatural then handed him Metatron, which won him a fanbase that had never sat through a Nerds film in its life.