“That Guy” Actor of the Day: Stephen Tobolowsky
Welcome back to the “That Guy Actor of the Day” column. It’s where we take a look at people whose faces you 100% recognize but you never seem to get their real names right. Today we’re going to focus on one of the most annoying movie characters in history: Ned Ryerson AKA Stephen Tobolowsky. Remember the guy who kept coming up to Bill Murray that we all hated? But there’s just so much more to Tobolowsky and his range. If any of you watched the show Californication you might notice that he played a producer who claimed to be “hung like a moose.” Stephen Tobolowsky has actually been acting since 1976.
The guy has nearly 250 acting credits to his name. While he’s never been the star of any movie he’s managed to form a very solid career for himself. Most recently he does the voices for a zillion cartoon characters. His first credit dates all the way back to 1976 and Tobolowsky’s been around ever since. Most recently you’ve seen him on Fuller House, The Goldbergs, Silicon Valley, and a bunch of others.
My personal favorite character of his is Tor on an episode of Seinfeld. He played a wacked out holistic healer trying to help George in the episode where he needed to get his tonsils out. In any event, here’s to Stephen Tobolowsky keeping it strong. And of course we have clips.
All The Ned Scenes from Groundhog Day
Tor In Seinfeld
He’s one of my favorite character actors. I enjoyed an episode of his podcast, The Tobolowsky Files, in which he describe how disorganized/crazy Heroes was.
Here’s an op-ed by Tobolowsky on character actors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/opinion/17tobolowsky.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all
More praise from Myles McNutt and Alan Sepinwall:
http://cultural-learnings.com/2010/05/06/a-serialized-man-the-narrative-pleasures-of-the-tobolowsky-files/
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/interview-stephen-tobolowsky-on-the-tobolowsky-files
He did a very funny/interesting IAMA over on reddit. Check it out. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g3qf5/iama_character_actor_who_was_a_appeared_in_over/
The Tobolowsky Files on /Film are genius. Great stuff from him.
Haha Dagron beat me to it ! He seems like a really awesome guy.
Great and very long interview with Stephen Tobolowsky over at Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. Ep 147.
http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/2011/02
I would highly recommend it. Marc gets people to talk about lots of subjects they wouldn’t discuss with regular reporters.