John Boyd
John Boyd is an actor, born 1981.
Procedural television has been John Boyd's home, and he is very good at the thing it needs. He arrived on 24 in its eighth and final season as Arlo Glass in 2010, joined Bones in its tenth season as FBI Special Agent James Aubrey and stayed through the end of the series in 2017, and since 2019 has played Special Agent Stuart Scola on FBI, a role that has also crossed into FBI: Most Wanted.
Three federal-agency jobs in a row is a specific skill rather than a rut: delivering procedure at speed, keeping a scene moving, and finding a personality inside dialogue whose real purpose is explaining the plot. Boyd plays clever and slightly prickly, and he is unusually good at the reaction shot, which is what these shows genuinely run on.
The film work is scattered and more interesting than the list suggests. He co-starred in Argo, the Academy Award-winning political thriller, which is not among the credits listed here, and turned up in The Notorious Bettie Page, Lady in the Water, The Greatest, Wonderstruck and the action picture Peppermint. The small parts are played without any straining for attention, which is probably why he keeps getting the big ones.
Movies (6)
TV (6)
Where to start with John Boyd
Nothing here uses him better than Bones. From season ten onward Aubrey arrives as an outsider in a long-established ensemble and has to earn his place in the story and with the audience at the same time, which is a hard assignment, and he manages it.
FBI is the current job and the easiest to sample, since procedurals are built for dropping in, and FBI: Most Wanted extends the same character. 24 is the archival curiosity, one season near the end of a famous run. On film, Wonderstruck is the most artful thing here and Peppermint the most straightforwardly entertaining, while The Notorious Bettie Page is the early credit worth digging up.