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Wait, Isn't He That Dude?: Hamish Linklater

By Genevieve Burgess | Celebrity | June 15, 2017 |

By Genevieve Burgess | Celebrity | June 15, 2017 |

We have another installment of the occasional Pajiba series recognizing and appreciating the actors who play the characters whose names you can never remember. Today’s installment comes to us straight from the one-two Noah Hawley punch of Legion and the current season of Fargo. He had a long running gig on The New Adventures of Old Christine and was briefly on HBO’s The Newsroom. He was also in the movie 42, which I enjoy watching via HBO On Demand as a prelude to a nice nap, and a long list of other credits mostly featuring ridiculous names. They still don’t top the ridiculousness of his actual name though. So, without further ado, I introduce you to Hamish Linklater.

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That’s him in The Big Short where he played a man named Porter Collins.

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There he is on Legion, playing Clark. That’s it. Just Clark. Clark had a pretty rough season, so he didn’t finish out the season looking like that. But before long, he popped up again in Noah Hawley’s Fargo, playing accountant Larue Dollard.

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He also got to hang out with the future King of Wakanda in 42 playing Ralph Branca.

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Something about this guy just screams “give me a character with a weird name”. An incomplete list of his previous roles includes such tongue twisters as; Elyott Vionnet, Brice Catledge, Jerry Dantana, Cal Zapata, Buffalo (No, the other characters were not named for animals.), John Joseph Jacobs, Private Stan Silver, and Dr. Bruce Cherry. One or two of those on their own wouldn’t draw attention. Put them altogether for one guy and you start to wonder if there’s just something about him in person that screams “I am a person who has to explain my name to people multiple times.” I guess growing up with a name like Hamish Linklater, you would have that attitude about you.

So what’s next for Mr. Linklater? He’s got four projects in post-production, the most promising of which appears to be Brie Larson’s directorial debut, Unicorn Store, which does not appear to have a release date yet. But, Noah Hawley has a lot more TV to make, and seems to like this guy, so there’s a good chance he’ll make his way across your screen again sometime in the near future.