At the end of last year, someone on Twitter managed to perfectly sum up the appeal of the best character actor working today. “Love how if you put Walton Goggins in your thing you have a guaranteed instant additional 20% goodness factor,” they wrote. It’s a claim that stands up. Watch Goggins in The Shield or Justified or megachurch sitcom The Righteous Gemstones – even the second Ant-Man film – and you’ll see a man who knows exactly how to elevate the material by sheer force of charisma alone.
There’s no such thing as a Walton Goggins type. At one point, he simultaneously starred as an assassin attempting to murder Santa in bloodthirsty Christmas movie Fatman and an adorable, newly widowed father in sunny sitcom The Unicorn. They came hot on the heels of his role as a goofy 19th-century sheriff in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight – and he played them all with the same unwavering commitment. There’s a sly magnetism to his work, a sense that no matter how challenging the material, he’s always having fun.
