J.K. Simmons

J.K. Simmons has been working since 1986 and has over 200 screen and stage credits, a number that only accumulates if a performer is genuinely easy to cast. He came up through theatre and spent the 1990s in the parts character actors get: cops, feds, doctors, a bureau man in The Jackal, a fixer in The Mexican.

The role that made him legible to everyone was J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, played at the exact pitch of a 1960s comic panel, all barked half-sentences and cigar-chewing contempt, and he has now played that editor across three separate continuities. It is a comic performance, which is partly why the reaction to Whiplash was so violent. As Terence Fletcher, the jazz instructor who abuses students in the name of greatness, Simmons applies the same volume to something with no joke underneath it, and the film never quite lets you settle on whether the method works. That won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he was nominated again for playing William Frawley in Being the Ricardos.

The specialty is what he does with an unpleasant man: he plays certainty rather than cruelty, so the cruelty arrives as a side effect. It also means the kind roles register harder. Mac MacGuff in Juno is one of the best-written fathers in American comedy and Simmons plays him largely in reaction shots. Alongside all this he has built a substantial voice career, from Kai in Kung Fu Panda 3 and Tenzin in The Legend of Korra to a superhero patriarch in Invincible whose calm is the most unsettling thing in the show. He also holds a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.