Scoot McNairy is one of the film industry’s most reliable supporting actors. Even if you don’t know his name off the top of your head, McNairy’s reliable track record speaks for itself; in the past few decades, he’s starred in two Best Picture winners, several modern crime classics, and several underrated gems.
McNairy has also received leading roles in the last two seasons of the Netflix crime series Narcos: Mexico, has done terrific work on True Detective’s third season, and starred in the underrated AMC series Halt and Catch Fire. This is to say that McNairy has built up an incredible body of work, with these 10 films indicative of his power as a supporting and leading player.
10 'Monsters' (2010)
While he’s generally known as a “character actor,” McNairy gave one of his strongest performances in the 2010 science fiction film Monsters, which comes from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards.
In the world of Monsters, a mysterious extraterrestrial object from outer space has crash-landed in the Mexican desert, making travel over the border a challenge. McNairy stars as the cynical photojournalist Andrew, who reluctantly agrees to transport a young girl across the border and bring her to safety. McNairy does an excellent job of subtly alluding to the tragedies in Andrew’s past.
9 'Killing Them Softly' (2012)
While the maverick writer/director Andrew Dominik may be sitting in “director’s jail” for a while after the offensive comments he made during the press tour for his 2022 film Blonde, his work outside the controversial Marilyn Monroe film is much more profound. Killing Them Softly analyzes the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on a small criminal empire and the various hitmen it employs.
McNairy and fellow character actor Ben Mendelsohn star as two dim-witted robbers who make the mistake of staging a heist during a high-profile mafia-fronted poker tournament.
8 'Argo' (2012)
Argo tells the incredible true story of Tony Mendez’s (Ben Affleck) daring rescue of American hostages from Iran in 1979, in which a team of CIA agents went undercover as the crew of a fake science fiction movie to disguise themselves.
McNairy co-stars as Joe Stafford, one of the hostages trapped in the U.S. embassy who must learn everything about the Hollywood industry and film production to save his life. Joe frequently questions Mendez’s tactics, and the conversations between McNairy and Affleck are electrifying.
7 'Promised Land' (2012)
While it may not have received the immediate acclaim that Good Will Hunting or To Die For, Gus Van Sant’s 2012 social drama Promised Land may be the great, overlooked film of his career. Matt Damon stars as a petroleum sales agent that is assigned to buy oil drilling rights from the local residents of a small rural town.
Promised Land’s strength is how realistically it captures the mannerisms of the small-town lifestyle. McNairy gives a valuable supporting performance as a disgruntled local man who sees no reason to change his town’s economy forever.
6 '12 Years A Slave' (2013)
12 Years A Slave is one of the rare Best Picture winners that will actually stand the test of time as a cinematic masterpiece; it’s grueling to watch, but Steven McQueen’s historical epic is one of the most complex depictions of American slavery ever brought to the screen.
Given the delicacy of McQueen’s approach, several great actors only get a limited amount of screen time. McNairy has a brief (but important) performance as a slave trader who deceives and captures Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). It’s a truly horrifying (yet sadly realistic) depiction of pure cruelty on McNairy’s part.
5 'Frank' (2014)
At the very beginning of Frank, the slightly bemused music producer Don (McNairy) advises the wannabe musician Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) to “just go with it” when interacting with exotic band leader Frank (Michael Fassbender). Frank is a brilliant, experimental artist that leads an eclectic group of musicians to create their own instruments and push the boundaries of what’s possible; he also happens to wear a paper maché head all the time.
This odd, surprisingly unsettling Irish dark comedy only works as well as it does because it seems like Fassbender, McNairy, Gleeson, and the rest of the cast are all on the same wavelength.
4 'The Rover' (2014)
The Rover may be one of the most underrated science fiction Westerns to be released since the original Mad Max. The Australian action thriller stars Guy Pearce as the widowed gunslinger Eric, who sets out on a path of vengeance after a group of thieves led by Henry (McNairy) steals his car.
Tensions escalate when Eric kidnaps Henry’s mentally challenged younger brother Reynolds (Robert Pattinson). Even though Henry is technically the villain of the story, the chemistry between McNairy and Pattinson makes him surprisingly relatable because of how believable their brotherly bond is.
3 'Gone Girl' (2014)
Gone Girl was a popular novel so well-known for its twisted spirit that only a filmmaker like David Fincher could properly adapt it. Ben Affleck stars as the pathetic husband, Nick Dunne, who finds himself framed for the disappearance of his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike in an Oscar-nominated performance). Nick soon discovers that Amy has been hiding much more from him than he had initially realized.
McNairy has a brief, yet critical role as one of Amy’s ex-boyfriends, who fills Nick in about some of the sordid pleasures that his wife seemed to enjoy during the time that they were together.
2 'A Quiet Place: Part II' (2020)
A Quiet Place: Part II expands the world of John Krasinski’s first sci-fi thriller by showing the grueling ways that humanity has devolved into chaos in the wake of an alien invasion. McNairy plays a mysterious survivor that Emmet (Cillian Murphy) and Regan (Millicent Simmons) must deal with to make it back to Regan’s mother, Evelyn (Emily Blunt).
McNairy is almost unrecognizable as this enigmatic figure; it’s clear that surviving on his own has stripped this unnamed character of any decency that he may have had before the aliens arrived.
1 'C'mon, C'mon' (2021)
It takes a truly brilliant actor to invoke tears from an audience in only a few brief scenes, but that’s exactly what McNairy does in Mike Mills’ riveting family drama C’mon C’mon. McNairy's performance is difficult to watch, but ultimately a highlight of the film.
McNairy appears as Paul, a loving family man who has depression and must rely on his estranged wife, Viv (Gaby Hoffman), to help him. A desperate Viv does not know what to do with her son, Jesse (Woody Norman), and decides to have him travel with her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix).