Michael Vartan
Michael Vartan is an actor, born 1968.
Born outside Paris and raised across two countries, Vartan arrived in American film in the mid-1990s in the parts that go to good-looking newcomers: Tommy in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Scott in The Pallbearer (1996), Jake in The Myth of Fingerprints (1997). Never Been Kissed (1999) briefly made him a romantic lead, as the teacher Sam Coulson.
Alias, from 2001, is the work. Michael Vaughn is a CIA handler, which on paper is the least interesting job in a spy series: he stands in a warehouse and gives the star her assignment. Vartan turned the passivity into the point. He plays decency at a low temperature, still and watchful, and the series worked partly because his steadiness gave everybody else something solid to lie to.
One Hour Photo (2002) uses the same quality from the opposite direction. He is the ordinary husband whose ordinary life is being observed, and the film needs him plausible rather than interesting, which is a genuinely difficult brief.
The post-Alias career has been steady television: Tom Wakefield on Hawthorne, James Walker on Big Shots, Michel Valentine on Kitchen Confidential, George Heldens on Bates Motel, Terence on The Arrangement, plus Lancelot in The Mists of Avalon. The films thinned out into genre and independents, Rogue (2007), Colombiana (2011), Small Town Crime (2018), and he is now described as retired from acting.
Movies (17)
- Colombiana (2011)
- To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
- Monster-in-Law (2005)
- Rogue (2007)
- Never Been Kissed (1999)
- One Hour Photo (2002)
- It Had to Be You (2000)
- Jolene (2010)
- Within (2016)
- The Pallbearer (1996)
- The Next Best Thing (2000)
- Demoted (2011)
- Small Town Crime (2018)
- Sand (2000)
- The Myth of Fingerprints (1997)
- Touch Me (1997)
- The Curve (1998)
TV (10)
Where to start with Michael Vartan
There is no real competition for the first slot here: Alias. Watch its first two seasons, where Vaughn is a fixed point in a show that keeps rewriting its own premise every few weeks.
One Hour Photo is the best film on this page and his most useful supporting performance: he is the normality the whole picture is measuring itself against.
Never Been Kissed is the 1999 romantic comedy people have argued about ever since, and it is worth seeing how carefully he plays a part that could easily have been indefensible. Small Town Crime is the late surprise, a lean crime film with a very good cast. Bates Motel and The Mists of Avalon are the television curios, and Rogue is a nastier creature feature than it needed to be.