Career
Strathairn is a character actor, appearing in supporting roles in many independent and Hollywood films. In this capacity, he has co-starred in Twisted as a psychiatrist; in The River Wild as a husband; and in Blue Car as a teacher. Other notable film roles include his portrayals of baseball player Eddie Cicotte in Eight Men Out (1988); Col. Craig Harrington in Memphis Belle (1990); Whistler, the wisecracking blind techie, in Sneakers (1992); convict Ray McDeere in the legal thriller The Firm (1993); abusive husband Joe St. George in Dolores Claiborne (1995); Pierce Patchett, a millionaire involved in the seedy side of 1950s Los Angeles in L.A. Confidential (1997); Theseus, Duke of Athens, in the 1999 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream; and the title character in Harrison's Flowers (2000)
He has frequently worked with his Williams College classmate and director John Sayles. He made his film debut in Sayles' Return of the Secaucus 7, and appeared in his films Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, Matewan, Limbo, and City of Hope, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award. Alongside Sayles, he played one of the "men in black" in Sayles' 1983 film The Brother from Another Planet.
Strathairn's television work also includes a wide range of roles: Moss, the bookselling nebbish on the critically acclaimed The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd; Captain Keller, the father of Helen Keller in the 2000 remake of The Miracle Worker; Capt. Frederick Benteen, a U.S. 7th Cavalry officer under General Custer's command in Son of the Morning Star; and a far-out (both figuratively and literally) televangelist in Paradise, the pilot episode for a TV series on Showtime that was not successful. Strathairn had a recurring role on the hit television drama The Sopranos. Strathairn starred in the Miami Vice episode "Out Where the Buses Don't Run."
Strathairn was nominated for an Academy Award for his stirring portrayal of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in the 2005 biographical film Good Night, and Good Luck. The film explored Murrow's clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy over McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts in the 1950s. Strathairn also received Best Actor Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations for his performance.
Strathairn appeared in We Are Marshall, a 2006 film about the rebirth of Marshall University's football program after the 1970 plane crash that killed most of the team's members; and Cold Souls, starring Paul Giamatti as a fictionalized version of himself, who enlists a company's services to deep freeze his soul, directed by Sophie Barthes. In 2006 he did a campaign ad for then congressional candidate (now Senator) Kirsten Gillibrand. He reprised his role as Edward R. Murrow in a speech similar to the one from Good Night, and Good Luck, but was altered to reference Gillibrand's opponent John Sweeney.
Strathairn plays the lead role in the 2007 independent film, Steel Toes, a film by David Gow (writer/co-director/producer) and Mark Adam (co-director/DOP/editor). The film is based on Gow's stage play Cherry Docs, in which Strathairn starred for its American premiere at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia.
He played a role in Paramount Pictures' children's film The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) as Arthur Spiderwick. Strathairn appeared in the American Experience PBS anthology series documentary, The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a biography of the physicist. He first played Oppenheimer in the 1989 CBS TV movie Day One.
In 2009, Strathairn performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans. It was adapted from the historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
In 2010, Strathairn won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his portrayal of Dr. Carlock in the HBO television film Temple Grandin. For that role, he also won the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.
He played William Flynn, an FBI agent dealing with anarchism in 1920s New York City, in No God, No Master. He starred as Dr. Lee Rosen on Syfy's series Alphas.
In 2018–19, Strathairn appeared on the third and fourth seasons of SyFy's The Expanse as Klaes Ashford.
In 2020, Strathairn was one of the few professional actors in the Oscar-winner Nomadland, directed by Chloé Zhao. He appears alongside his son Tay, the first time they have acted together on screen since 1988's Eight Men Out when Tay was just eight years old.
Strathairn starred in the 2023 film Remember This, based on the stage play about the life of Polish diplomat and war hero Jan Karski who brought evidence of the Holocaust to Western governments during WW2. The film is executive-produced by Eva Anisko and directed by Jeff Hutchens and Derek Goldman.
The following year, he portrayed Bill Carruthers, creator of the popular game show Press Your Luck in The Luckiest Man in America, based on an actual incident involving a contestant on the show.
In 2025, he made his animation voice acting debut playing the lead antagonist, Milton Lynxley, in Walt Disney Animation Studios' feature film Zootopia 2.
