Paul, Rising: The TV Glut Is Good for This Comedic Actor

Paul Reiser still looks like Paul Reiser. The curly pompadour from his Mad About You days has receded to a rough thatch of steel wool, but his voice has lost none of its nasal tone, and he remains physically fit, even by Hollywood standards. Nevertheless, you’d be forgiven for not remembering what Reiser looks like. Or even who Reiser, 58, is. He basically disappeared when the sitcom that made him famous ended in 1999.

In the last year or so he’s started reemerging. He had a small, memorable role as the sincere, somewhat hapless father of a drumming prodigy in last year’s Oscar-nominated Whiplash; another as the wry, somewhat hapless father of a young man in love with a zombie in Life After Beth; and yet another as the much-older husband of a character in the FX comedy Married. In 2013 he popped up as an entertainment attorney in HBO’s hit Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra.