Mark Kiely
Mark Kiely is an actor, born 1963.
Not every acting career is a ladder. Kiely, born in Providence, Rhode Island and a graduate of Assumption University in Worcester, is best known for a recurring guest run as Gil Meyers on Beverly Hills, 90210, which is an accurate description of the shape of the whole record: recognisable work, in recognisable productions, without a lead role attached to it.
The film credits are studio character parts, and a few of them are in genuinely good films. He is a mechanic in The Edge, Dwight in Gods and Monsters, Fred Donohue in Bruce Almighty, Mark Blackwell in The Judge, a talent agent in Leprechaun 2, Ben Hecht in a Young Indiana Jones feature, Lt. Crawford in Rain. Television gave him Kevin Patrick in Brooklyn South and Michael Hanson in the 2011 Charlie's Angels.
What makes the record unusual is the part that is not on it. He lives in Rhode Island, worked as a competitive swimming coach, and continues to take acting roles as they come. That is a career treated as a job rather than an identity, which is more common in the profession than the profession likes to admit and almost never written down.
Movies (9)
TV (2)
Where to start with Mark Kiely
There is no headline performance to point at, so pick by film rather than by part. Gods and Monsters is the best thing on the list by a wide margin, a quiet drama about the last days of a horror director, and worth watching whether or not you are here for him.
The Judge and The Edge are the other two with real filmmaking behind them, the first a courtroom drama with a heavyweight cast, the second a survival picture written by David Mamet and much stranger than its poster.
Bruce Almighty is the one most people have already seen. Brooklyn South is the interesting television curio, a short-lived police series from the makers of NYPD Blue that deserved better. Leprechaun 2 and The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Mystery of the Blues are for completists, and the second is a genuinely odd artefact.