Steve Howey
Steve Howey is an actor, born 1977.
Two long-running series carry Howey's career, and they belong to different decades and different tones. Van Montgomery on the WB and CW sitcom Reba came first, from 2001, and it is broad network comedy played at full volume.
Kevin Ball on Shameless is the better use of him. The thing Howey can do that most comic actors cannot is play enthusiasm without intelligence as a form of decency: a man who is wrong about nearly everything and loyal about the things that matter. It should be a one-note part and he keeps finding new notes in it over the length of the American series, which is why Kev survives storylines that would flatten a lesser performance.
The film work is mostly studio comedy in supporting positions, which is where the physical size gets used as a joke: Bride Wars, Something Borrowed, Game Over Man!, Stuber, Day Shift, plus the video game adaptation DOA: Dead or Alive and the motocross picture Supercross. Stan Helsing put him in a title role in a spoof that nobody defends. More recently he has gone back to series television as Harry Tasker in the True Lies adaptation and Nick Wagner on High Potential, with Happy's Place and Off Campus also on the list. He is a specific and useful kind of television actor, and networks keep noticing.
Movies (15)
TV (9)
Where to start with Steve Howey
Shameless is the whole case for him. It is a long show, so start anywhere in the first four seasons: Kevin and his bar are the warmth the show needs to stay watchable while everything around them gets bleaker.
If you want the earlier, simpler version, Reba is the multi-camera sitcom where the persona was assembled. For films, Day Shift gives him the most fun as a vampire hunter's colleague and Stuber and Game Over, Man! are the broad comedies that use his size as the punchline. High Potential is the current one and the most conventional, a network procedural where he plays the straight-arrow cop rather than the idiot with a heart. Skip the spoofs.