Garret Dillahunt

It happens occasionally in movies: an unknown actor will get two or three movie roles back to back, then have them all reach theaters – or a film festival – at the same time. If the movies happen to be good and the actor is particularly noticeable, Boom! He’s having a moment.

It happened, in various years, at Sundance – one year it was Parker Posey, one year it was Lili Taylor, or Steve Zahn or Philip Seymour Hoffman.

There’s something similar happening on TV, though the actors aren’t unknowns. Because of the staggered nature of TV seasons these days, actors are suddenly available for more than one series at once – and can have two or more shows on the air at the same time.

I think of them as serial actors – not because they act in serials but because they seem to move so quickly from job to job. So quickly that they sometimes can be seen on a couple of series at a time.

The first one I noticed doing it was Garret Dillahunt, who actually played two different characters during the two seasons of “Deadwood”: Jack McCall, who killed Wild Bill Hickock, and then Francis Wolcott, a razor-wielding businessman with a thing for killing prostitutes.

At roughly the same time, Dillahunt was playing Jesus on the short-lived “The Book of Daniel” and an oily operative on “The 4400.” He went from “Deadwood” to a less villainous role as a doctor on “John from Cincinnati” – then turned up as a terminator on “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (please, Fox, don’t cancel this show!) and as a vicious Russian crime lord tormenting Det. Charlie Crews on NBC’s equally intriguing “Life” (another show so well-written that they apparently have no choice but to cancel it).

Dillahunt, who played Tommy Lee Jones’ deputy in “No Country for Old Men,” also had a brief role in the first season of “Damages” – and many more. He’s a delight wherever he pops up: always different, always compelling, using his boyish good looks as a platform for truly devilish characters.

Dean Winters

That’s sort of the same look – in a slightly more wholesome way – that Dean Winters has. Winters also turned up on “Sarah Connor Chronicles,” as a long-time paramour of Sarah who gave his life toward the end of the just-concluded season to save John Connor.

Winters, who I first noticed as the viciously amoral Ryan O’Reily on HBO’s “Oz,” was playing roles on three other series around the same time as he was appearing on “Terminator”: as Tommy Gavin’s police-detective brother on “Rescue Me” (he was killed off in Season 3); as the father of the lost detective on the short-lived “Life on Mars”; and as Tina Fey’s hilariously low-rent boyfriend on “30 Rock.” He’s as skilled at comedy as he is at serious roles, as good at being sympathetic as he at being scary.

The current champion of this career path, in my eyes, is Zeljko Ivanek, whose series credentials stretch back to “Homicide: Life on the Street” and include “Oz” and “24,” as well.

Zeljko Ivanek 

Ivanek won an Emmy playing Ted Danson’s closeted lawyer on the first season of “Damages.” In the past year, he’s reprised that role (a neat trick, given that the character killed himself in Season 1). He also showed up as the main villain on “Heroes,” cold-bloodedly tracking the mutants for the government.

Meanwhile, he turned up as a vampire chieftain on HBO’s “True Blood.” And, toward the end of the just completed season of “Big Love,” he suddenly appeared as the former husband of Chloe Sevigny’s character.

Ivanek gets around. When he popped up on “Big Love,” I said out loud, “What’s next for this guy – ‘According to Jim’?”

But that sells Ivanek short. In fact, he’s a wonderfully unpredictable actor with terrific taste. He’s as compact as Dillahunt is lanky – with a fascinatingly pronounced skull and sunken eyes that make him look malevolent even when he’s smiling. Hard to believe that one of his break-out roles was as Matthew Broderick’s older brother in the original Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

Of course, now all the series he appears in have finished their season. But I get the feeling Ivanek can’t be kept down that easy. I’m sure he’ll turn up in some new series without warning, like Waldo in a crowded marketplace: Where’s Zeljko?

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