Tom Irwin is good at making a father’s worries worth hearing without insisting that his daughter share them. His thoughtful ensemble acting gives My So-Called Life much of its fairness towards the grown-ups.
Fi1m perspective
In My So-Called Life (1994), the parents’ worries are allowed to matter. Tom Irwin’s Graham Chase makes that fairness work: we understand why his concerns deserve a hearing without needing Angela to abandon hers. He is a thoughtful ensemble actor, particularly useful when a drama needs a father to be more than the person who says no. Alongside Bess Armstrong’s Patty Chase, he gives us a reason to keep listening when the conversation moves away from the young.
Winnie Holzman’s drama gives him something worth playing, allowing the generations to disagree without making Angela look foolish. Claire Danes makes adolescent self-consciousness immediate; Irwin and Armstrong ensure that the adults have something to contribute beyond objections. We were moved by the care they give the parents’ concerns, because understanding Graham does not require us to dismiss his daughter. The narration sometimes explains what Danes has already made clear, which is a real reservation about an otherwise perceptive programme. Irwin benefits from the writing’s generosity, and does his share to make it convincing.
His long association with the Steppenwolf ensemble, beginning in 1979, makes sense beside that willingness to work as part of a cast. An early film credit was FBI Agent Perry in Midnight Run (1988), before regular television work in My Life and Times (1991) and My So-Called Life. We recommend Midnight Run for Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin’s quarrelling, which Martin Brest gives room to develop. Irwin’s presence there is not, by itself, grounds for praising him; Graham gives us considerably more to judge.
Later television parts include Father John Hanadarko in Saving Grace (2007) and Adrian Powell in Devious Maids (2013). Across his work, he has often been cast as soft-spoken fathers and authority figures. Such parts can be thankless when the writing only wants someone to stand in the way; Graham is the reason to look beyond that expectation. Start with My So-Called Life, and give the parents as fair a hearing as the teenager.
Biography
Tom Irwin is an American actor born on 1 June 1956 in Peoria, Illinois. He graduated from Illinois State University and joined the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 1979, appearing in more than fifty productions with the ensemble.
His screen credits include the role of F.B.I. Agent Perry in the film Midnight Run (1988). On television he played Graham Chase in My So-Called Life (1994) and Adrian Powell in Devious Maids, with guest appearances in series such as Lost, 24, Castle and How to Get Away with Murder. Film roles also encompass 21 Grams (2003) and Marley & Me (2008).
Irwin has taught at DePaul University and Columbia College Chicago, and instructs at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company West School of Drama in Los Angeles. He received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his stage performance in The Glass Menagerie.
