What Shows Was Martin Donovan in Before ‘Archive 81’? - Netflix Tudum

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    Here’s Where You Recognize Martin Donovan From

    The Archive 81 actor is no stranger to the screen.

    By Reyna Cervantes
    Jan. 17, 2022

Martin Donovan is an actor with quite the laundry list of roles. Making his screen acting debut in 1985, he’s a face you've seen numerous times without realizing it. This month, he appears in Archive 81 as the millionaire Davenport, the keeper of a trove of videotapes that he hires a young film archivist to restore — a daunting task because the tapes were all destroyed in a mysterious apartment fire in the ’90s. While this may be Donovan’s first foray into the horror genre, it’s far from his first appearance in some of the most well-known movies and TV series of the past decade. Let’s look at a few of Donovan’s most notable roles — and where you’ve likely seen him before.

Weeds

One of Donovan’s most recognized roles was in the runaway success Weeds. The show follows widowed mother Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) as she begins selling marijuana to support her family, and, in the process, unwittingly builds a lucrative drug empire. Donovan played corrupt DEA Agent Peter Scottson, who inevitably developed a romance with Botwin. Donovan was praised for his portrayal of the loose cannon agent and was promoted to series regular after just one season, eventually earning him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.

Ant-Man

In 2015, Donovan appeared in Ant-Man, playing Mitchell Carson, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who works for nefarious terrorist organization Hydra. Carson sets out to acquire “yellowjacket” technology from the film’s main villain. His plan fails, leading to the rise of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who takes his rightful mantle as Ant-Man. Ant-Man was a massive success at the box office, grossing $519.3 million worldwide. What’s more, Donovan’s role was integral to subplots in Marvel movies for years to come.

Tenet

After working with Christopher Nolan on one of the acclaimed director’s earliest movies, Insomnia, Donovan reunited with Nolan for the 2020 thriller Tenet. Donovan portrayed Fay, the CIA boss to whom the story’s lead character (John David Washington) reports as the two work to uncover an international terror plot. The film is notable for being one of the first tentpole Hollywood releases since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and was critically praised for its action and for Donovan’s coolly shrewd performance.

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