"That Guy" Hall of Fame: Jack Warden
With nearly 200 screen credits, this character actor is a face you recognize and a name you should know
Stars carry movies, but the supporting actors are the glue that holds them together. I have always enjoyed following “that guys”; people you see in a bunch of movies but might not remember their names. Hector Elizondo is a “that guy,” Michael Stuhlbarg is a modern example of a “that guy,” and of course, there are women who are great “that guys” too, like Judy Greer.
There are, however, some that rise to the top and I am starting a “that guy” Hall of Fame to acknowledge the really great actors who pop up in a lot of things and stand out while remaining somewhat anonymous. Since we just did the 1983 Oscars on the podcast, my first inductee is Jack Warden who capped off a great run of work with The Verdict in 1982.
Going up against a still-peak Paul Newman is no small feat, but Warden more than holds his own in their scenes together while never actually upstaging the lead. That perfectly encapsulates what he did well and makes him the quintessential “that guy.”
Check out this string of movies from the mid-70s to the early ’80s: Shampoo in 1975 (which earned him an Academy Award nomination), All the President’s Men in 1976, Death on the Nile in 1978, Heaven Can Wait in 1978 (another Academy Award nomination), Being There in 1979, And Justice for All in 1979, Used Cars in 1980 (an underrated comedy by the same team that made Back to the Future), and The Verdict in 1982.
Amongst all that he still found time to mix in three bad movies: White Buffalo in 1977, So Fine in 1981 (a movie about see-through jeans—don’t ask), and Carbon Copy also in 1981.
I could spend hours talking about Carbon Copy, which was Denzel Washington’s first movie and has a decent number of “that guys” in it. It also stars George Segal, a big actor in the ’60s and ’70s who might qualify as a “that guy” in his own right for all the stellar character work he did in his later years. The premise of the movie is that Segal’s upper-middle-class character finds out he has a teenage black son who wants to be adopted. Just think about how this movie would have handled this issue in 1981 and you can figure out all you need to know. Fun fact: George Segal turned down the lead in Arthur to be in this movie!
Warden goes all the way back to the original cast of 12 Angry Men in 1957. He also starred in one of my favorite TV shows as a kid, Crazy Like a Fox, and had memorable roles as late as 2000 when he was in The Replacements, a not-so-great movie with an excellent cast including Gene Hackman and Keanu Reeves, which I think is a lot of fun.
But his late “that guy” MVP performance was in While You Were Sleeping, a really sweet rom-com from 1995. Warden is in full kindly grandpa mode at this point and is the kind-hearted center of the movie.
He also starred in a short-lived Bad News Bears TV show in 1979, was in Norm Macdonald’s TV show in 2000, and was even in The Great Muppet Caper.
Popping up everywhere over the course of 50 as someone you recognize but don’t know, Jack Warden is a true “That Guy” Hall of Famer.