This week on The Walking Dead, we were introduced to Gregory, the leader of the Hilltop Colony and verifiably creepy dude. Gregory had a sleazy eye for Maggie, a keen interest in only himself, and he’s the kind of guy who calls himself a “nice guy,” which is probably what every sociopath says about himself.
Gregory has a bad vibe, like The Governor only without the trophy case of zombie heads.
The actor who plays Gregory, however, is outstanding. Xander Berkeley has been acting for more than 30 years, a that guy whom everyone has seen in something. He’s a guy we see on television and think, “I’ve seen that guy before, but I can’t recall exactly where.”
In fact, we’ve seen him a lot.
He’s probably best known for playing George Mason in early seasons of 24.
The set of 24 is actually where he met his wife, Sarah Clarke, who interestingly was Jon Hamm’s prom date back in high school.
Small world, right? Berkeley and Clarke now live in Maine, where they raise their two daughters, when they’re not preoccupied with acting jobs.
It’s possible that viewers may also remember Berkeley from Terminator 2. His character did not fare well.
If one wants to go way, way back, one of Berkeley’s first screen roles was in M*A*S*H, where he played “Marine.”
Berkeley spent a lot of time in the early 1980s bouncing around in bit roles on television shows, like Moonlighting, Hart to Hart, The Incredible Hulk, Remington Steele, Cagney and Lacey, Miami Vice and The A-Team.
Berkeley also had a tendency to end up on the wrong side of a death scene, as for instance in Candyman.
He was also in A Few Good Men. He passed Tom Cruise’s character a pen.
He also played Hodge in an episode of The X-Files called “Ice,” which was basically a version of John Carpenter’s The Thing. He survived. Felicity Huffman — also in the episode — didn’t fare as well.
Berkeley was also in Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire, because an actor has to work.
He played a Secret Service Agent/mole in Harrison Ford’s Air Force One. He doesn’t make it out of that one alive, either.
More recently, Berkeley had a run on The Mentalist, he was a regular in Nikita, he had a recurring role in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, he had to suffer through four episodes of Zoo, and he appeared in a couple of episodes of Justified.
Of course, this is just a tiny sampling of roles Xander Berkeley has had in his career. Since 1981, he has 226 screen roles, so anyone who watches television or goes to the movies has probably seen Xander Berkeley at some point, as he is one of the most prolific character actors around. Because he’s so often cast as a shifty guy or villain, he doesn’t tend to stick around on any television series for long. In other words, don’t expect to see him on The Walking Dead beyond this season or next.
