In Character: The Cast of Lincoln

If Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is nothing else, it is a glorious roll call for many of the finest character actors currently working in film. As often as I can, I dedicate this blog to character actors in my recurring column, In Character, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to mix things up.

So, below I have called out more than 20 character actors who appear in Lincoln, highlighting some of their best work, and drawing attention to their one particular best role.

Hope you enjoy putting names to the faces!

Bill Camp

Role in Lincoln: Mr. Jolly

Notable roles: Public Enemies, Lawless, Damages

Best role: Camp was utterly perfect as Ann Dowd’s at-first sympathetic (then devastatingly manipulated) fiancé in the masterful thriller Compliance.

David Costabile

Role in Lincoln: James Ashley

Notable roles: Flight of the Conchords, Damages, Afterschool, Solitary Man, Breaking Bad

Best role: As the do-whatever-it-takes-to-win-a-Pulitzer Baltimore Sun editor in the fifth season of The Wire, Costabile was the perfect business slime ball.

Joseph Cross

Role in Lincoln: John Hay

Notable roles: Flags of Our Fathers, Untraceable, Milk

Best role: I didn’t like Ryan Murphy’s Running with Scissors (at all), but as Augusten Burroughs, Cross did his damndest to carry the film as best he could.

Dane DeHaan

Role in Lincoln: Second White Soldier

Notable roles: True Blood, Chronicle, Lawless

Best role: DeHaan was a perfect encapsulation of teenage angst in the third season of HBO’s phenomenal show, In Treatment.

Adam Driver

Role in Lincoln: Samuel Beckwith

Notable roles: You Don’t Know Jack, J. Edgar, Frances Ha

Best role: His Adam Sackler on HBO’s Girls is currently the best character on television.

Wayne Duvall

Role in Lincoln: Senator Bluff Wade

Notable roles: Apollo 13, The District, Love Liza, In the Valley of Elah, Pride and Glory

Best role: Duvall is hilariously pathetic as a Grand Wizard of the KKK in the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Walton Goggins

Role in Lincoln: Clay Hutchins

Notable roles: The Apostle, House of 1,000 Corpses, Miracle at St. Anna, Justified

Best role: What Goggins did with Shane from The Shield marks one of the finest character arcs I have ever seen a television character go through. By the end of the show, he was completely stealing every scene.

Lukas Haas

Role in Lincoln: First White Soldier

Notable roles: Witness, Mars Attacks!, Alpha Dog, While She Was Out, Inception

Best role: I loved his snaky, curiously commanding The Pin from Brick. No idea how I guy like that was able to maintain control for as long as he was.

Jackie Earle Haley

Role in Lincoln: Alexander Stephens

Notable roles: The Bad News Bears, Breaking Away, Watchmen, Shutter Island

Best role: Tough call, but I still think Haley should’ve won the Oscar for his icy portrayal of a pedophile in Little Children.

Jared Harris

Role in Lincoln: Ulysses S. Grant

Notable roles: Natural Born Killers, Dead Man, I Shot Andy Warhol

Best role: What Harris did in the most recent season of Mad Men should’ve earned him the Emmy. Period. Long live Lane.

John Hawkes

Role in Lincoln: Robert Latham

Notable roles: Deadwood, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Sessions

Best role: His unrecognizable, remorseless Teardrop in Winter’s Bone justly catapulted his career. A perfect performance.

Hal Holbrook

Role in Lincoln: Preston Blair

Notable roles: All the President’s Men, Wall Street, The Firm, The Majestic

Best role: Holbrook is utterly devastating in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. That final send off, when he asks to adopt Chris? Wow.

Bruce McGill

Role in Lincoln: Edwin Stanton

Notable roles: Animal House, My Cousin Vinny, Matchstick Men, Collateral, Cinderella Man

Best role: McGill doesn’t have a huge role in Michael Mann’s The Insider, but he steals every second he is on screen.

Boris McGiver

Role in Lincoln: Alexander Coffroth

Notable roles: Rescue Me, Fur, John Adams

Best role: Nothing beats McGiver’s helplessly clueless lieutenant from The Wire. Dude just wanted his camera back.

Peter McRobbie

Role in Lincoln: George Pendleton

Notable roles: The Purple Rose of Cairo, Shaft, World Trade Center, Law & Order, Boardwalk Empire

Best role: His one scene as John Twist represents one of the more heart breaking moments of Brokeback Mountain. He knew what his son was, and he couldn’t care less.

S. Epatha Merkerson

Role in Lincoln: Lydia Smith

Notable roles: Terminator 2, Lackawanna Blues, Slipstream, Mother and Child

Best role: She killed it on Law & Order for damn near 20 years. Impossible to top.

Tim Blake Nelson

Role in Lincoln: Richard Schell

Notable roles: The Thin Red Line, Donnie Brasco, The Good Girl, Syriana, Leaves of Grass

Best role: There are many entertaining nincompoops in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Nelson’s Delmar O’Donnell ranks chief among them.

David Oyelowo

Role in Lincoln: Corporal Ira Clark

Notable roles: The Last King of Scotland, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Paperboy

Best role: Actually, I’m going to go with his Lincoln role. His brief monologue to Lincoln (in which he recites Lincoln’s own words) perfectly sets the tone.

Bill Raymond

Role in Lincoln: Schuyler Colfax

Notable roles: Dogville, Michael Clayton, Damages

Best role: Raymond’s The Greek proved to be one of the most subtly menacing and memorable characters from The Wire.

James Spader

Role in Lincoln: W.N. Bilbo

Notable roles: Less Than Zero, Wolf, Crash, Secretary, The Practice, Boston Legal

Best role: Spader has a rather impeccable body of work, but he’s never been better than as the manipulative Graham in Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

David Strathairn

Role in Lincoln: William Seward

Notable roles: L.A. Confidential, Harrison’s Flowers, The Bourne Identity

Best role: Strathairn is one of the finest, most reliable actors currently working in film. I am a huge admirer of his, and I can say with upmost sincerity that his work as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck represents one of the finest performances of the ‘00s.

Michael Stuhlbarg

Role in Lincoln: George Yeaman

Notable roles: Afterschool, Boardwalk Empire, Hugo, Seven Psychopaths

Best role: While I love Stuhlbarg’s work as Arnold Rothstein in Boardwalk Empire, I simply can’t turn my back on Larry Gopnik, that desperate, curious, lost man from the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man.

David Warshofsky

Role in Lincoln: William Hutton

Notable roles: Running Scared, Public Enemies, The Master

Best role: Warshofsky has one of the best deliveries of the line, “What?!” in cinema history. Because, really, how would you respond to having Daniel Day-Lewis tell you he’s going to come into your home when you least expect it and slit your throat? Ah, the power of There Will Be Blood.

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