Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser is an actor, born 1956.
Reiser came out of New York stand-up and got his first real screen part as Modell in Diner in 1982, still one of the most quotable supporting turns of that decade. Two years later he was Jeffrey in Beverly Hills Cop, and in 1986 he played Carter Burke in Aliens, which remains the key to everything he does well.
Burke is the template. Reiser plays the company man as somebody who genuinely believes he is being reasonable: no sneer, no relish, just a middle manager running a spreadsheet in his head while the people around him are in danger. That is far more disturbing than a villain who enjoys the work, and it is a specific gift. He used the same tone as the drummer's father in Whiplash, a man whose supportiveness is faintly humiliating, and again as Dr. Sam Owens in Stranger Things, where the joke on the audience is that the reassuring government official is, this time, on the level.
The other career is comedy. My Two Dads and then Mad About You, which ran through the 1990s with him as Paul Buchman and came back for a revival in 2019, made him a network fixture, and he writes as well as performs. The late run has been unusually good: Getty in Red Oaks, Martin in The Kominsky Method, Cy Feuer in Fosse/Verdon, Gordon in Reboot, and a return as Jeffrey in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, forty years after the first one.
Movies (27)
- Whiplash (2014)
- Aliens (1986)
- The Little Hours (2017)
- Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
- Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)
- Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
- Concussion (2015)
- The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)
- Fatherhood (2021)
- Funny People (2009)
- Behind the Candelabra (2013)
- The Story of Us (1999)
- Life After Beth (2014)
- Horse Girl (2020)
- The Darkness (2016)
- War on Everyone (2016)
- Get Bruce! (1999)
- One Night at McCool's (2001)
- Bye Bye Love (1995)
- Diner (1982)
- The Marrying Man (1991)
- Joshy (2016)
- The Book of Love (2017)
- Crazy People (1990)
- Miles (2017)
- Aliens Expanded (2024)
- Happy Birthday Elizabeth: A Celebration of Life (1997)
TV (12)
Where to start with Paul Reiser
Aliens first, even if you have seen it, and watch Burke rather than the xenomorphs. It is the performance the rest of the career keeps quoting.
Diner is the other essential, and Modell is the reason a generation still quotes a question about a sandwich. For the modern version of the same trick, Stranger Things hands him a government scientist and dares you to trust him, while Whiplash uses his warmth for something quietly devastating, a father whose encouragement lands like a verdict.
The comedy is a separate pleasure. Mad About You is a very good marriage sitcom that has aged better than its contemporaries, and The Kominsky Method and Red Oaks are the late supporting roles worth your time. Beverly Hills Cop is the popcorn entry, and he is still running the same bit four decades later in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
The likeable man you should not trust
His second act, and the best of his career. Burke in Aliens is the template, and Stranger Things plays directly on the audience remembering it. The trick only works because of how warm the eighties work was.
Eighties and nineties comedy
Where the persona was built: Barry Levinson's Baltimore, the Beverly Hills Cop films, and seven seasons of the sitcom he co-created. Diner is the best film of them by a wide margin.
The late character work
The recent run of small, precise supporting parts in prestige television and film, usually playing someone slightly disappointing. The Kominsky Method and Red Oaks are the warmest of them.