Matt Berry makes pompous men funny by taking their self-importance seriously, right down to the last extended vowel. We rate his straight-faced commitment, though repeated variations on the same blustering man can wear thin.
Fi1m perspective
Matt Berry stretches a vowel and gives an ordinary line the weight of a theatrical announcement. His booming baritone suits men who expect to be obeyed, particularly when they have done nothing to deserve it. What makes them funny is how completely he accepts their importance to themselves. He rarely needs to signal the joke, and we prefer him when he leaves us to notice the foolishness.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004), his screen debut, introduced that straight-faced style. His early collaborators included Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness, and The IT Crowd (2007) gave him the lecherous executive Douglas Reynholm. With Toast of London (2012), which he co-created and wrote, Berry made the deluded actor Steven Toast a sustained exercise in vanity. It is a good fit, but also a warning about the limits of the approach: another blustering narcissist can start to feel familiar.
In Moon (2009), Berry plays Overmeyers in a supporting role, while Duncan Jones’s science fiction film depends on Sam Rockwell’s sharply judged performance. Its loneliness remains painfully convincing even when the suspense slackens. There is plenty to recommend here, but we would not send someone to it as an introduction to Berry’s comedy.
The Wild Robot (2024) makes more direct use of his comic manner. In Chris Sanders’s film, Berry voices Paddler, a beaver determined to fell every tree on the island, which gives his grand delivery a suitably absurd ambition. We laughed uneasily at Pinktail’s children playing dead, because their mother was so matter-of-fact about not all of them surviving the year. The film becomes less affecting when its last third gives itself over to action.
The useful development is Laszlo Cravensworth, his vampire in What We Do in the Shadows (2019–2024), where the ridiculousness allows room for vulnerability. Berry can make such a character seem plausible without asking us to approve of him. Start there if the bluster elsewhere has put you off.
Biography
Matt Berry is an English actor, comedian, musician and writer. He was born on 2 May 1974 in Bromham, Bedfordshire.
Berry graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA in contemporary arts. He is best known for television roles including Douglas Reynholm in The IT Crowd (2007–2013), Steven Toast in Toast of London (2012–2020, which he co-created), and Laszlo Cravensworth in What We Do in the Shadows (2019–2024). He won a BAFTA Award for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme for Toast of London and received a Primetime Emmy nomination for What We Do in the Shadows.
Berry has voiced characters in films including Moon (2009), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020) and The Wild Robot (2024). He has released multiple studio albums.
