Benjamin Bratt
Don’t underestimate Benjamin Bratt. We all became very comfortable with his quiet, intelligent persona in almost a hundred episodes of Law and Order in the late Nineties, and more recently as an equally suave doctor in the last couple of years of Private Practice, but he’s done plenty more–and not always playing the same kind of character. This is a good week to point that out: Bratt has just replaced Al Pacino as the voice of the villain “Eduardo” in Despicable Me 2 (Pacino, in turn, had replaced the original “Eduardo,” Javier Bardem), his performance as the romantic lead in the classic James Michener’s Texas is just now available on DVD, and he was back on Modern Family as Gloria’s ex-husband just a couple of weeks ago.
The ‘romantic lead’ stuff is what we’ve come to expect. But in fact there’s much more to Bratt and his career. He’s worked as a narrator and voice-over talent for years, and “Eduardo” isn’t his first cartoon voice. He was “Manny” in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and he’ll be reprising that role in the sequel later this year. He was one of the narrators of The American Experience in 2009, and he will be the voice of the landmark PBS series American Latinos when it premieres this fall.
In the The Cleaner
Bratt, in fact, is always full of surprises. He’s played cops, doctors, and soldiers over the years, just as we expect…but he’s also played bad guys (as in the recent Snitch), ex-addict crusaders (is in the short-lived cable series, The Cleaner) and suspiciously suave ex-husbands (in at least three episodes of Modern Family). And he’s been doing it for far longer than you might realize, and the talent he’s worked with reads like a who’s who of Hollywood: Meryl Streep in The River Wild, Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger, Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man. And he was Sandra Bullocks’ cop-boyfriend in Miss Congeniality and Halle Berry’s main squeeze in the best-forgotten Catwoman.
The only really surprising thing about Bratt’s career is how long he’s been around, how wide his range, and how little he’s changed in more than twenty-five years of work. We can’t really know what to expect next–except it’ll be unexpected and, inevitably, worth watching.
