Louise Palanker · CC BY-SA 2.0

Fred Melamed spent decades as a voice-over artist and bit-part actor, including small roles across seven Woody Allen films, before breaking through in his fifties as Sy Ableman in the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. That role, arriving after years of overlooked work, remade him into a sought-after character actor, with parts in In a World..., Hail, Caesar!, and Shiva Baby, and television roles in WandaVision and Barry; Vulture named him one of the best character actors working today.