Why These DC Movie Actors Look So Familiar

The ever-expanding galaxy of DC Comics films has given us a number of A-list actors portraying some of the universe's mightiest beings. But it takes a village to raise a superhero, which means there have been a slew of actors providing support for those wearing tights and saving the day. It also means moviegoers have probably watched a DC movie and asked themselves "Where have I seen that actor before?"

Fear not, dear reader — we're here to help with a look at some DC Extended Universe stars that offers a rundown of some of the places you may have seen them before, whether it's been television or the movies. It takes a performer with a solid resume to make their way into a notable role in any of DC's films — and this deep dive into these actors' other notable roles offers plenty of proof. Here's why some of your favorite DC stars look so familiar.

Adam Beach made his entry into the DC universe as Christopher Weiss, a.k.a. Slipknot, the rope-tying and -climbing expert enlisted into Amanda Waller's Task Force X. Unfortunately, things didn't work out so well, with Slipknot being tricked into blowing himself up. You've gotta hate when that happens.

But long before he donned the hemp and latex of a supervillain-turned-superhero, Beach was a bona fide crime fighter when he spent 21 episodes as Detective Chester Lake on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, where he was paired alongside Ice-T's Fin Tutuola.

Beach's career has seen him play military figures one more than one occasion, including two of his most notable roles. His breakout role came in 2002 when he played Private Ben Yahzee in John Woo's Windtalkers. The movie told the story of the Navajo Indians who used their native language to create codes to help America win the battles in the Pacific during World War II. Two years later, Beach starred in another World War II epic with Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers. This time, Beach took on the role of Ira "Chief Falling Cloud" Hayes, the Native American marine who helped raise the United States flag on Iwo JIma during World War II.

Like Connie Nielsen, David Thewlis' role within the DC Universe was too large to be contained within one film. In Wonder Woman, Thewlis played Sir Patrick Morgan, the English aristocrat who secretly plots to obtain a chemical weapon to destroy the world. When his plan is foiled, Morgan reverts to his true form as Ares, the god of war — a role he revived in Justice League. But Thewlis was engaging in supernatural battles long before the tangled with Diana of Themyscira — he also appeared in multiple films in the Harry Potter franchise as the half-blood werewolf Professor Remus Lupin.

In The Theory of Everything, Thewlis played a character that was not otherworldly but was no less cosmic. He brought physicist and cosmologist Dennis Sciama to the big screen, a role that earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Thewlis earned another major award nomination — this time a Golden Globe — for playing the malevolent villain V.M. Varga on the third season of Fargo.

While it certainly wasn't his meatiest role, astute fans of The Big Lebowski might also recognize Thewlis from his brief yet memorable appearance as Knox Harrington, the video artist and friend of Maude Lebowski.

In the titular battle of Batman v. Superman, Scoot McNairy's character Wallace Keefe undoubtedly picked a side. He blamed the son of Krypton for the loss of his legs — and the eventual loss of his wife and daughter — before eventually defacing a Superman statue in his hometown of Metropolis. As for actor Scoot McNairy, the DC film was a departure from a career that has been heavy on indie features. In Our Brand Is Crisis, he played Richard Buckley, a low-budget commercial director hired to help a political consulting firm re-elect a controversial president in South America.

More recently, McNairy has found plenty of work on television. In the third season of True Detective, he played Tom Purcell, the grief-stricken father of a young murder victim. The Netflix limited series Godless saw McNairy playing an actual lawman as Bill McNue, the sheriff of an old West town almost completely inhabited by women. However, he might be best known for his work in the 1980s-based drama Halt and Catch Fire, on which he starred as Gordon Clark, a computer engineer trying to resurrect his career after a very public professional humiliation.

Green Lantern didn't draw rave reviews when it was released in 2011, but it did give Mark Strong a chance to stake a claim to a piece of the DC Comics Universe as Sinestro, former member of the Green Lantern Corps who is ultimately dismissed from the squad and eventually becomes the nemesis of Hal Jordan.

If the idea of Strong playing a villain seems fitting, it's because he has a long history of playing bad guys in movies — like Frank D'Amico in Kick-Ass, a drug dealer and mob boss who runs afoul of the title character thanks to a mix-up over a missing shipment of cocaine. Things don't work out well for Frank. In RocknRolla, Strong remained on the wrong side of the law, this time as a strong-armed henchman named Archy. As a trusted assistant to mob boss Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), Archy handles the dirtier side of Cole's real estate dealing business. In 2019, he returned to the DCEU as Doctor Sivana, nemesis to the title character in Shazam!

It hasn't been all scowls and antagonizing for Strong's screen roles. In Kingsman: The Secret Service and its sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Strong plays the part of Merlin, a Kingsman agent and technical specialist who works alongside multiple lead field agents.

Dig deep enough into the Batman canon and you'll come across the name Carmine "The Roman" Falcone. As an enemy of the Caped Crusader but a friend to the Wayne Family, Falcone was the head of his own crime syndicate and kept drugs prevalent on the streets of Gotham City. In Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, that portrait of corruption was brought to life by Tom Wilkinson — a veteran character actor with more than 100 credits to his name. He took a turn in another comic book-based film with The Green Hornet as James Reid, newspaper magnate and father of the title character.

Batman Begins isn't Wilkinson's only gig as a mob boss — he also played the unscrupulous Lenny Cole in RocknRolla alongside Mark Strong, another inhabitant of the DC Universe — but not all of Wilkinson's roles have been of the menacing variety. In the television miniseries The Kennedys, he portrayed family patriarch Joseph Kennedy, Sr., and in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, he played Graham Dashwood, a man travelling to India near the end of his life to reconcile a secret that he'd kept hidden for years.

Sure, Dr. Manhattan gets all the press, but without Rorschach, would Watchmen have been nearly the same? Probably not. The man who brought Alan Moore's classic character to life in Zack Snyder's big-screen adaptation was Jackie Earle Haley, who first made his name as a child actor.

Haley's earliest work was as a voice actor in the animated series Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, as the original voice of Jamie Boyle — a role that was eventually taken over by Willie Aames. But his true breakthrough role was as Little League baseball stud and neighborhood bad boy Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears, a role he would reprise in a pair of sequels.

After his Bears days ended, Haley faded from the spotlight for a time, picking up roles here and there until he landed the role as Watchmen's resident psychopath. That opened more opportunities for the veteran actor, beginning with the role of Freddy Krueger in the 2010 reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Haley starred in another remake in the 2014 edition of Robocop when he took on the role of Rick Mattox, a military specialist and main opponent of the title character. More recently, Haley portrayed the powerful but shady Odin Quincannon, whose (eventually unsuccessful) goal was to own everything he could in the small town of Annville, Texas, in the show Preacher.

It's nearly impossible to tell the story of Batman — or his nemesis, for that matter — without mentioning either Thomas or Martha Wayne. In Joker, the patriarch of the Wayne family is played by Brett Cullen, here a mayoral candidate who may or may not be the father of would-be Joker Arthur Fleck. It's not the first time Cullen has participated in some Gotham City goings-on: The actor played an unnamed congressman in The Dark Knight Rises.

While Cullen has a long list of credits, many of his appearances have come on the small screen, including small roles on The Incredible Hulk and M.A.S.H. Much more recently, audiences might have seen Cullen in season 3 of True Detective as Gerald Kindt, the district attorney who presided over the events of the disappearances of Will and Julie Purcell. It was just one of a number of law and order-themed shows he's appeared in, going along with stints on Narcos, Person of Interest and a guest appearance on CSI.

So much of the DC Universe has focused on the Batman and Justice League series, but the franchise intends to spread its wings with Birds of Prey, nesting in theaters in 2020. Among the flock as Black Canaryis Jurnee Smollett-Bell, who might not have the same profile as some of her co-stars but has every bit the resume — and maybe even more.

Smollett-Bell began her career at the age of six with a recurring role on the ABC sitcom Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, which carried over into the same role on Full House. Yet her breakout role was as the title character in the 1997 film Eve's Bayou in which she played a young girl trying to come to terms with her father's infidelity in 1960s Louisiana. It wouldn't be the last period piece for Smollett-Bell as she portrayed Rosalee, a sheltered house slave on the WGN America series Underground, for two seasons before the show's cancellation. More recently, Smollett-Bell has been featured in multiple critically acclaimed series with notable roles in Friday Night Lights and True Blood.

Rosie Perez is a double threat, hearkening back to old-timey movie stars like Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly — she's a really good dancer and a really good actress. She helped shape and popularize hip-hop dance in the late '80s and early '90s as the Emmy-nominated choreographer for the Fly Girls on In Living Color. She landed that job after her explosive, movie-opening dance performance in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, in which she also had a supporting role as Tina. 

Perez remained a fixture of early '90s cinema, which includes her role as Gloria, the Jeopardy!-bound girlfriend of Woody Harrelson's character in White Men Can't Jump, and she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the 1993 plane crash survival drama Fearless. After 2000, she popped up as corrupt cop Officer Brazier in Pineapple Express and recurred on shows like Search Party and Lipstick Jungle along with a stint as part of the hosting panel of The View. She may have a big comeback in store with Birds of Prey, where she'll play longtime comics character Renee Montoya, a Gotham City detective.

Kristen Wiig made a name for herself as the breakout star on a long-running TV institution. From 2005 to 2012, she became one of the most popular and accomplished Saturday Night Live cast members of all time. She brought numerous goofy characters to life, including mischievous schoolgirl Gilly, one-upper Penelope, tiny-handed The Lawrence Welk Show performer Dooneese, one of "The Californians," and surly movie reviewer Aunt Linda, among others. Her prominence on SNL led to big film roles, with her star-making turn coming in 2011's Bridesmaids. She co-wrote that film, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. 

Like Adam Sandler or Eddie Murphy, SNL launched Wiig to an active movie career. She's co-starred in big studio comedies like Anchorman 2, Zoolander 2, Downsizing, and 2016's Ghostbusters reboot, as well as quirky, hard-to-define indie dramedies such as Girl Most Likely, Welcome to Me, and The Skeleton Twins. She also does a bit of work in animation, lending her voice to all three How to Train Your Dragon movies, all the Despicable Me films, and Fox's Bless the Harts. Wiig's role in the hotly anticipated Wonder Woman 1984 might just be her biggest to date — she'll square off against Diana Prince as Barbara Ann Minerva, an archaeologist who uncovers the lost city of Urzkataga and becomes inhabited by its nasty cat goddess, transforming her into the villainous Cheetah.