Ron Livingston

On a prison telephone in The Flash (2023), Ron Livingston makes Henry Allen's patience look exhausting. We were moved by how beaten he seems, and by the effort he suggests it takes to remain calm. The film keeps abandoning its family story for effects and callbacks, but he gives that story a little of the weight it needs. We value him most when such apparently ordinary behaviour is allowed to matter.

A supporting part in Swingers (1996) came before Peter Gibbons, the lead in the workplace satire Office Space (1999). His deadpan delivery suits people who are tired of the arrangements everyone else accepts, though the danger is that disillusionment becomes a manner rather than a character. With Band of Brothers (2001), his naturalistic style found a substantial use in a dramatic ensemble. That turn matters more to our view of him than his reputation for sarcastic men who say what they think.

His Lewis Nixon gives Damian Lewis's Richard D. Winters someone who need not respond to everything as he does. Their difference in temperament makes the scenes between them more convincing, and lets Livingston contribute without competing with Lewis's restraint. The series has the patience to accommodate both men, which is why we find it a stronger setting for Livingston than the cluttered The Flash. We get time to notice the way they work together, without waiting for the next interruption.

Later supporting work includes The Conjuring (2013) and Tully (2018), while the lead role of Sam Loudermilk in Loudermilk (2017–20) returns to his caustic comic habits. We would not take that recurring sourness as a guarantee that a part has depth; a dry delivery still needs something worth saying. We are more interested when the writing gives him somebody to react to than when it supplies another complaint to make. Start with Band of Brothers, for the scenes with Lewis. His work in The Flash is not a reason to sit through the rest.