Mark Duplass
Mark Duplass is an actor, born 1976.
The company came first. Mark Duplass, born in New Orleans in 1976, started Duplass Brothers Productions with his brother Jay in 1996, and it is the thing that explains everything else: the low-budget features they wrote and directed together, The Puffy Chair in 2005, Baghead in 2008, Cyrus in 2010, Jeff, Who Lives at Home in 2011 and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon in 2012, then the series Togetherness and Room 104.
As an actor he has one great trick, and it is unnerving. He plays open, friendly, eager-to-connect men, and he is better than almost anyone at letting that warmth curdle without changing register. Creep is the pure form of it, a horror film in which he stays affable throughout while you get steadily less comfortable about it. Kenneth in Safety Not Guaranteed runs on the same tension, sincerity you cannot quite calibrate. Even Chip Black in The Morning Show is powered by likeability turning out to be insufficient.
The other half of the career is the two-hander: small films built around two people talking, Blue Jay and Paddleton and Language Lessons and The One I Love. Meanwhile the studio work pays for it, a specific and reliable supporting presence in Zero Dark Thirty, Tammy, Tully and Bombshell, plus voice work in Big Mouth. He is still doing all of it at once, with Backrooms arriving in 2026.
Movies (27)
- Backrooms (2026)
- Love Sonia (2018)
- Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
- Parkland (2013)
- Creep (2014)
- Bombshell (2019)
- Tully (2018)
- Creep 2 (2017)
- Tammy (2014)
- People Like Us (2012)
- Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
- Duck Butter (2018)
- The Lazarus Effect (2015)
- Greenberg (2010)
- Language Lessons (2021)
- The One I Love (2014)
- Cyrus (2010)
- Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2012)
- Blue Jay (2016)
- Your Sister's Sister (2011)
- Mercy (2014)
- 21 Years: Richard Linklater (2014)
- Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
- Paddleton (2019)
- Hurricanna (2025)
- Darling Companion (2012)
- Baghead (2008)
TV (17)
- Goliath (2016)
- The Morning Show (2019)
- Big Mouth (2017)
- The Mindy Project (2012)
- Mating Season (2026)
- The League (2009)
- Match Game (2016)
- Good American Family (2025)
- Manhunt (2017)
- Room 104 (2017)
- Room 104 (2017)
- Calls (2021)
- Togetherness (2015)
- Togetherness (2015)
- Celebrity Jeopardy! (2022)
- Grave Conversations (2024)
- Pretzel and the Puppies (2022)
Where to start with Mark Duplass
Watch Creep with as little information as possible, alone, and preferably at night. It is small, close and quiet, and it is the single best demonstration of what makes him unusual on screen. Creep 2 is the rarer thing, a sequel that changes the terms rather than repeating them, and it is nearly as good.
Safety Not Guaranteed is the friendlier entry point and the one to hand a sceptic. The One I Love takes a high-concept premise and plays it as a marriage argument, which is the Duplass method in miniature.
For the quiet stuff, Paddleton is the one that will get you, and Blue Jay is its closest relative. The Morning Show is the mainstream role, and Cyrus is the best of the features he directed with his brother.