Guy Boyd

More than 150 stage and screen productions since the late 1970s, and almost none of them with his name above the title. The screen record here opens with Between the Lines in 1977, and by the early eighties he is working steadily: Omar Norris in Ghost Story, Eric in Ticket to Heaven, which brought a Genie nomination, and Rooney in Streamers, Robert Altman's film of David Rabe's play, whose cast took the Volpi Cup at Venice. That is a serious start.

The eighties then made him an institution man. A detective in Body Double, Matthew Barnes in Jagged Edge, a sergeant in Tank, a coach in Lucas, a father in The Ewok Adventure, a cop in Pacific Heights. He has the build and the flat, unhurried voice for men who carry a badge or a clipboard, and the useful thing is that he never inflates them: his authority figures are tired functionaries rather than icons, which is why directors kept hiring him for one scene of credible pressure.

The nineties thin out badly. Carnosaur 2, a syndicated Black Scorpion, Sweet Evil, small parts in smaller pictures. Then a late second act that is far better than the middle one: The Savages, Foxcatcher, While We're Young, Certain Women, The Report as Senator Saxby Chambliss, Sharp Objects, Chet Collier in The Loudest Voice, a compromised archbishop in The Young Pope. The peak of it is the janitor in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, the largest thing he has been handed in decades and a part the film keeps circling back to.