Xander Berkeley
Xander Berkeley is an actor, born 1955.
Xander Berkeley has appeared in more than two hundred film and television projects since the early 1980s, a career built on being instantly castable and almost never top-billed. He is in Mommie Dearest, Sid and Nancy, The Grifters, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Leaving Las Vegas, Air Force One and Amistad, usually for a scene or two, usually as an official of some kind. He played different characters in Michael Mann's L.A. Takedown (1989) and its remake Heat (1995), which is a fair summary of how much work he was getting.
His best film parts share a temperature. Todd Voight in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a stepfather too irritated to notice the danger he is in. Trevor Lyle in Candyman is an academic behaving badly inside a film about much worse things. Dr. Lamar in Gattaca is the one people quote, a genome technician whose few short scenes are the warmest thing in a very cold film.
Television gave him the longer runs: George Mason across the first two seasons of 24, Percy Rose in Nikita, Sheriff Thomas McAllister on The Mentalist, Gregory on The Walking Dead, and the lead in the Citytv psychological thriller The Booth at the End from 2010 to 2012. He specialises in men with authority and elastic scruples, and he plays them without ever asking you to enjoy the company.
Movies (73)
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
- Heat (1995)
- Taken (2008)
- Apollo 13 (1995)
- Kick-Ass (2010)
- Gattaca (1997)
- Fracture (2007)
- Allegiant (2016)
- A Few Good Men (1992)
- Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
- Transcendence (2014)
- Solace (2015)
- Shanghai Noon (2000)
- Air Force One (1997)
- Faster (2010)
- Barb Wire (1996)
- The Man from Elysian Fields (2001)
- Candyman (1992)
- Mommie Dearest (1981)
- Son of Batman (2014)
- North Country (2005)
- The Dark and the Wicked (2020)
- Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009)
- Rust (2025)
- Year One (2009)
- Seeking Justice (2011)
- The Grifters (1990)
- City of Lies (2018)
- Seraphim Falls (2007)
- Reagan (2024)
TV (21)
- The Mentalist (2008)
- 24 (2001)
- Nikita (2010)
- The Wild Thornberrys (1998)
- Teen Titans (2003)
- Salem (2014)
- Truth Be Told (2019)
- Zoo (2015)
- Being Human (2011)
- The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993)
- Super Force (1990)
- Riptide (1984)
- Star Wars: Tales of the Empire (2024)
- Life with Louie (1994)
- Extreme Ghostbusters (1997)
- Grand (1990)
- Partners (1995)
- The Tick (1994)
- Karen Sisco (2003)
- The Legend of Calamity Jane (1997)
- The Court (2002)
Where to start with Xander Berkeley
Watch Gattaca first, and pay attention to his final scene, which does more with a genial functionary than most films manage with their leads. It is a small part people still quote decades later.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the biggest thing he is in, playing a domestic irritant in a film about the apocalypse, and it works because he is so recognisably ordinary. Heat and Candyman are the other nineties credits to prioritise, then Air Force One for the version of him in a tie and an earpiece. On television, 24 gave him the best sustained material of his career across its first two seasons, Nikita gave him a proper villain to run with, and The Mentalist is best approached knowing nothing at all about his character.
The nineties studio films
A decade in which he seems to be in everything, usually for two scenes as the official with bad news. Terminator 2, Apollo 13, A Few Good Men, Heat: he is the connective tissue of an entire era of American film.
The television runs
Where he finally got parts long enough to build. George Mason on 24 is the best known, and Nikita and The Mentalist both used him as a man whose authority is not quite what it appears.
The genre credits
Science fiction and horror have used him constantly, and Gattaca contains the single best thing he has ever done: a doctor whose one quiet decision reframes the entire film in its last minutes.
The voice work
A long parallel career in animation, mostly for DC and Cartoon Network. Mento and General Immortus in Teen Titans are the ones a certain generation will recognise before they place the name.