Age: 74
male
John Stephen Goodman (born June 20, 1952) is an American actor. He rose to prominence in television before becoming an acclaimed and popular film actor. Goodman has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Vanity Fair has called Goodman "among our very finest actors." Goodman is known for his collaborations with the Coen brothers, acting in films such as Raising Arizona (1987), Barton Fink (1991), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). He took on leading roles in King Ralph (1991), The Babe (1992), Matinee (1993), The Flintstones (1994), and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). Goodman also had supporting roles in Revenge of the Nerds (1984), True Stories (1986), Sea of Love (1989), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Storytelling (2001), Speed Racer (2008), The Artist (2011), Flight (2012), Argo (2012), The Hangover Part III (2013), and Atomic Blonde (2017). He has voiced roles in The Emperor's New Groove franchise (2000–2008), the Monsters, Inc. franchise (2001–present), The Jungle Book 2 (2003), and Bee Movie (2007). On television, Goodman gained recognition by playing the family patriarch Dan Conner in the comedy series Roseanne (1988–1997; 2018) and The Conners (2018–present). Goodman had regular roles in the HBO drama series Treme (2010–2011), the legal drama series Damages (2011), the political comedy series Alpha House (2013–2014), and the HBO comedy series The Righteous Gemstones (2019–present). He has been a frequent host of Saturday Night Live (1989–2013) and has guest starred in The West Wing (2003–2004), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006), and Community (2011–2012). Goodman started his career at The Public Theatre, acting in numerous productions, including Henry IV, Part 1 (1981), The Skin of Our Teeth (1998), and The Seagull (2001). He made his Broadway debut in Big River (1985), for which Goodman received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical nomination. He returned to Broadway in revivals of the Samuel Becket play Waiting for Godot (2009) and the newspaper comedy The Front Page (2016). Goodman debuted his West End in a revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo (2015).
John Goodman
Jonathan Winters
for Jonathan Winters in Make God Laugh (2027)
Suggested by kaueoliveira
"Make God Laugh" is an unflinching American biographical drama that plunges into the beautiful, frenetic, and ultimately tragic psyche of the fastest mind in comedy. The film rejects a standard chronological birth-to-death structure, instead unfolding across three intersecting timelines: a black-and-white 1978 Los Angeles as a coked-up, scared young comedian meets his idol John Belushi on the night of Belushi’s death; the Technicolor chaos of the 1990s "Mork and Mindy" and "Aladdin" heights, where Robin battles his inner demons while trying to be a present father; and the somber, digitally sharp 2010s, where a quieter, deeply paranoid Robin struggles with a mysterious neurological decay misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s. Will Ferrell delivers a transformative, Oscar-worthy performance, capturing not just the manic, improvisational tornado the public adored, but the profound stillness and bone-deep exhaustion of a man who believed his only value came from making others laugh, terrified of the silence within himself. Jason Reitman directs with a delicate balance of kinetic energy and crushing intimacy, channeling the collaborative tension of "Saturday Night" into the lonely corridors of fame. The film doesn’t shy away from the addiction, the infidelities, or the devastating reality of Lewy body dementia, but it frames them not as tabloid fodder but as the desperate symptoms of a man whose immense, empathetic heart was wired to feel everything too deeply. The title, taken from an old adage about the hubris of making plans, serves as the central theme: the painful divide between the joy Robin Williams projected and the internal narrative of a man who spent his final days in a fog of cognitive decline, believing he had lost the only currency that mattered—his ability to connect. The final act is a tear-streaked tribute to the silence behind the laughter, ending not on his death, but on a flashback to the first time he ever made his stoic father genuinely laugh.
