Željko Ivanek makes professional authority look less reassuring than it ought to. We value his precision with dialogue and his feel for conflicted men, though repeated casting as the antagonist can make his arrival too easy to read.
Fi1m perspective
Željko Ivanek is often the man with the professional title, and there is usually a reason to be wary of him. Lawyers and officials recur in his work; he is good at making calculation and doubt believable in people accustomed to being obeyed. The precision comes through in his handling of dialogue, a strength rooted in his stage work.
Television gave that skill recurring employment as Ed Danvers in Homicide: Life on the Street and Governor Devlin in Oz, both with writer and producer Tom Fontana. In Donnie Brasco (1997), his Tim Curley is a supporting part in a film carried by Al Pacino and Johnny Depp's uneasy friendship. We found the danger painful because Pacino and Depp make that friendship matter. Ivanek belongs to the surrounding ensemble, where his precision is useful without needing to become the attraction. The family story is thin, but the central relationship makes this the firmer recommendation.
In Dancer in the Dark (2000), Ivanek's District Attorney is a more direct example of his casting as an authority figure. Lars von Trier's punishing musical makes considerable demands on its audience, some earned by Björk and the songs, some imposed by a contrived script. It is worth enduring, but we resist some of the tears it demands. Von Trier has cast Ivanek in three films. His precision is welcome here, though no supporting performance could make all that suffering feel earned.
Damages, in which he played Ray Fiske from 2007 to 2010, raised his profile and gave the calculating professional more room for conflict. Later film parts such as Robert Pender in Argo (2012) and the Desk Sergeant in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) continued his supporting work. The reservation is that repeated authority roles can make us anticipate an antagonist before a character has had a chance to develop. We would like more parts that complicate that expectation. Try Damages for a fuller sense of what he can do.
Biography
Željko Ivanek is a Slovenian-American actor born on 15 August 1957 in Ljubljana, then Yugoslavia. He was educated at Yale University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
His film roles include Tim Curley in Donnie Brasco (1997), appearances in Black Hawk Down (2001), Argo (2012) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and parts in several films by Lars von Trier. On television he played Ray Fiske in Damages (2007–2010), for which he received the 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, and has had recurring roles in series including Homicide: Life on the Street, Oz, Madam Secretary and The Walking Dead: Dead City.
Ivanek has also worked extensively in theatre, receiving a Drama Desk Award and three Tony Award nominations.
