You should know about Jason Clarke
He co-stars in Academy Awards’ Best Picture nominee ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ as CIA agent Dan Bradley: here’s why you should know about Jason Clarke.
In Zero Dark Thirty, you’ll easily spot Jason Clarke hunting for Bin Laden alongside Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain. He’s impossible to miss.
As veteran CIA operator Dan Bradley, the Australian actor serves as a sort of mentor and later, valued contact for Chastain’s Maya Lambert. Dan is one of the first characters we meet in the film, and although he eventually takes a back seat to Maya, he never fades away. That’s because Clarke is one of the sharpest actors working today. Not only does he have the physical presence to be the guy you absolutely do not want interrogating you, but he takes Dan on an arc of his own, creating an empathy for the man as he goes. There’s an interest in what happens to him even when the story is no longer about him. It’s a head-scratcher that Clarke didn’t pick up a supporting-actor Oscar nomination himself.
His performance, however, isn’t a surprise to anyone who has had the pleasure of watching Clarke on the small screen over the last several years. His first major US role was as ambitious Rhode Island politician Tommy Caffee in Showtime’s original series Brotherhood, which ran for three seasons starting in 2006. It certainly didn’t look like it was his first time in the lead. He was fantastic at peeling back the layers of Tommy, revealing to the audience that the so-called ‘good brother’ was as flawed as everyone else. Yet even when he did things that were absolutely infuriating — and there were a few — Clarke’s performance made it so you never stopped caring about him. Tommy never lost his humanity, for better or for worse. Brotherhood was a brilliant series all the way around, and one heck of a way for an actor to make an arrival. Continue reading 'You should know about Jason Clarke' »