- Paul Adelstein as Wrigley
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
It may not be the most beloved Coen Brothers’ film, and it was their first work-for-hire gig, but it still has some fantastic comic moments. Paul Adelstein plays the admiring legal partner & friend to George Clooney’s Miles Massey. The film is meant to be in the style of a snappy Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges comedy, and it nails the tone quite well. Adelstein is pitch-perfect as the type of supporting player in those directors’ films back in the 1930s & 40s. His reactions are broad but not cloying & hammy. It’s a great example of how, even on a studio-made picture, the Coens could inject a captivating personality into every player’s role.
- Jon Polito as Johnny Casper
Miller’s Crossing (1990)
“He’s giving me the high hat!” That became one of those quotes I kept telling myself around the house the last time I watched Miller’s Crossing. Jon Polito is one of those faces you have seen in many things. His turn in Miller’s Crossing as the insecure and volatile mob boss Johnny Casper is unforgettable. Initially, Polito was approached to play The Dane, which we can all agree would have been horrible miscasting. He understood this too and said no, countering with the role of the Italian mob boss. He gets a couple of excellent monologues in the picture, and you cannot forget him when the end credits roll.
- Fred Melamed as Sy Ableman
A Serious Man (2009)
Vulture named Fred Melamed one of the best working character actors in the business today, and they are exactly right. He has quite the range between his distinctive deep honey-rich voice and his ability to create strong, confident characters and insecure, anxiety-ridden ones. In A Serious Man, he plays the villain, unlike any villain you’ve seen in a Coen Brothers film. Sy Ableman becomes a force that completely disrupts the main character’s life but conveys an aura of progressive sensitivity for the late 1960s. It’s been argued he’s on par with Anton Chigurh, and I would agree. It’s a different evil, but it’s just as chilling.
- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Amy Archer
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
The Hudsucker Proxy is one Coen film that you don’t hear many people talk about, and that is a shame because it is such a great one. It’s rooted in the directors’ love of screwball comedies, and we see that in the actor’s performances, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh. The character of fast-talking tough-as-nails reporter Amy Archer is born directly out of Rosalind Russell and Katherine Hepburn, who played very similar people in many of their films. It takes a deft actor to pull that off and not have it become a farce, and Leigh is up to the task. It’s one of the supporting performances that deserves a lot more praise.
- Tony Shalhoub as Freddy Riedenschneider
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
I grew up watching Tony Shalhoub as taxi driver Antonio on the sitcom Wings so I had a minimal view of his talents. Then, I went to the theater in my second year of college and saw this incredibly modern noir film from the Coens. While Shalhoub only has a few scenes, he steals them as the philosopher-lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider. Through the dry narration of its central character, Ed (Billy Bob Thornton), we see through Freddy’s slick veneer. He’s a man who talks a lot but rarely says anything and instead just tries to obfuscate the truth.
- Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Brandt
The Big Lebowski (1998)
There are a lot of great supporting performances in The Big Lebowski, but the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s turn as Brandt is one I will never forget. He’s the anxious assistant to the wealthy Jeffrey Lebowski and wants to help resolve the case of mistaken identity The Dude has had to deal with. Hoffman was great at playing cold, calculating characters, but he shines when he’s given insecure men. Brandt is such a great comic element that improves every scene he’s in, between his nervous laughter over Bunny or when he’s translating his boss’s enraged rantings.
- Brad Pitt as Chad Feldheimer
Burn After Reading (2008)
Burn After Reading did not deserve the negative response from audiences at the time. It was the Coen Brothers’ follow-up to No Country For Old Men, so people thought they would get that again. Brad Pitt proves he should play more comedic supporting roles, stepping away from the leading man thing. Chad Feldheimer, a personal trainer at the Hardbodies gym, assumes the CD-R left behind in the locker room containing CIA agent Osbourne Cox’s memoir draft is a top-secret government document. His attempts at spycraft are hilarious, the epitome of a dumb person who thinks they are brilliant, which is most of the characters in this film. With the brothers seemingly pursuing separate careers now, it’s a shame we won’t see Pitt in another of their movies.
- Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Whenever I see this character, one word comes to mind: “Vagina.” Moore delivers a fantastic performance as the daughter caught in the middle of the sprawling, ridiculous crimes of The Big Lebowski. While the artistic aspects of Maude are based on some known performance artists, her voice & mannerisms feel straight out of the same screwball comedies that have always influenced the Coens. Additionally, she is given the edge of noir femme fatale just without being so fatale. It’s a performance that feels broad and manicured simultaneously, a tough feat to pull off.
- Peter Stormare & Steve Buscemi as Gaear Grismrund & Carl Showalter
Fargo (1996)
While Frances McDormand and Wiliam H. Macy are great in Fargo, I have always felt the two bumbling crooks made the movie. They are so inept and mismatched that we can feel their story will turn out horribly. Each actor plays to their strengths, with Buscemi being a wormy creep who can’t shut the fuck up. Meanwhile, Stormare barely utters a word; when he does, they come from a void of empathy and emotion. Somehow, the actors can wed slapstick & verbal comedy with some truly cruel & rotten human beings. We’re left wondering how these guys ever ended up partners in the first place, as dissonant as they are.
- M. Emmet Waslh as Loren Visser
Blood Simple (1984)
It was the first Coen film, and damn if M. Emmet Walsh didn’t steal the show from everyone else on screen. Loren Visser is one of the most vile film villains ever presented in cinema, just an irredeemable human slug. I would argue that Visser does understand the nature of America; it is a place where the only way to guarantee you get what you want is to fuck over everyone between you and your goal. As a result, he is entirely amoral, never seeing a line he wouldn’t cross. His job as a private detective nets him good cash but also plays into his kinks of peeking into the personal lives of others. Like many of these other roles, he’s not in half the film’s scenes, but nothing else on screen matters when he shows up. I think he’s an equal to Anton Chigurh in terms of pure evil.
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