TV - Movies
Why The
Corinthian From
Netflix's
Sandman Looks
So Familiar
By NICK STANIFORTH
With so many memorable characters, the Netflix adaptation of “The Sandman” needed a pitch-perfect cast member to realize the conniving, calculating living nightmare known as the Corinthian. In the end, the role was left to actor Boyd Holbrook, and here’s where you may have seen him in the past.
Long before he was getting in people's heads in "The Sandman," Holbrook was the super-smooth scuba instructor that caught the eye of Kristen Wiig in "The Skeleton Twins." As a Kentucky-born actor and model, Holbrook decided to make his character Australian, going against a common issue that American actors appear to have when handling certain accents.
In 2015, Holbrook signed up alongside Pedro Pascal to play DEA agent Steve Murphy in “Narcos,” an acclaimed series about the rise and fall of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. The first two seasons followed Murphy and Peña's (Pascal) efforts to take Escobar down as his enterprise grew exponentially.
In James Mangold’s “Logan,” Holbrook plays the metal-armed Donald Pierce, a longstanding enemy of Wolverine who is tasked with tracking down the latter’s daughter Laura. Delivering a performance that makes you almost wish he could somehow get cast as Gambit, Pierce has an uneasy respect for the worn-down Weapon X he is crossing paths with.
As the U.S. Army sniper Quinn McKenna, Holbrook took on the titular alien in Shane Black’s poorly-received “The Predator.” "I just think the first [Predator movie] caught lightning in a bottle," he later said in an interview. "And with people wanting to do more, maybe you should just let a sleeping dog lie, sometimes. That was a big takeaway for me."
Holbrook has also appeared in "Vengeance," B.J. Novak's directorial debut for a feature film which follows a New York-based journalist who takes a trip to West Texas to investigate the death of an old flame that he met some time before. Holbrook plays Ty Shaw, the brother of the deceased who wears his heart on his sleeve.