Michael Connor Gainey (born January 18, 1948) is an American character actor best known for his appearances in Lost, Con Air, Sideways, Tangled, and Django Unchained.
Early life
Gainey was born in Jackson, Mississippi. In the early 1970s, he attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California, with Ken Hixon. Prior to this, he attended the University of Southern Mississippi. He worked as a mortician's apprentice before he decided to study acting. He served in the U.S. Army and was the company mailman at his post in Chakmakli, Turkey in 1969.
Career
In 1981, he made his big-screen debut in Herbert Ross's musical Pennies from Heaven starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. Since the early 1980s, he has been in over 50 films, including Two Idiots in Hollywood (1988), The Mighty Ducks (1992), The Fan (1996), Breakdown (1997), Con Air (1997), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Sideways (2004), Are We There Yet? (2005), The Dukes of Hazzard (2005), Wild Hogs (2007) and Mr. Woodcock (2007).
Gainey was one of the stars of the short-lived series Against the Law and played Tom Friendly on the series Lost. He also played murderous drug dealer Bo Crowder in season one on the hit FX series Justified. He has guest starred on over 40 television shows, including The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Designing Women, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Walker, Texas Ranger, Criminal Minds, CSI, Girl Meets World, Cheers, Days of Our Lives, The X-Files, Desperate Housewives, The Mentalist, Burn Notice, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
In 2003, Gainey appeared in The Last Cowboy, playing the role of Lance Henriksen's friend, along with Bradley Cooper and Jennie Garth. In 2004, Gainey appeared as a cuckolded husband in full frontal nudity in the award-winning arthouse film Sideways. He played Kurtz / The Wizard in the controversial road-revenge short film Apocalypse Oz. In 2007, he appeared in Mr. Woodcock, Wild Hogs, and Unearthed. In 2010, he appeared in Love Ranch and voiced the Captain of the Palace Guard in Tangled and he reprised this role for the TV series Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure in 2017–2020. In 2012, he appeared in Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained.
Personal life
He has been married to his wife Kim Novicki since 2002.
On being typecast, Gainey stated:
With a face like this, there aren't a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I've got a face that was meant for a mug shot and that's what I've been doing for the past thirty years. If I play a cop, it's always a racist cop, or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop - but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts.
On his favorite of the villainous characters he has played, Gainey said:
"Swamp Thing" in Con Air. In a movie that has so many villains, take a look at my character closely - not that it supports the weight of a careful examination - and you'll see that I don't really get in anyone's face, I don't really kill anyone, I'm not really a bad guy - I'm just a guy who likes to fly. He made the mistake of landing his plane full of controlled substances in the wrong place and finds himself in the system. In terms of bad guys though, the character I played in Breakdown was a very bad human being. There's nothing redeeming about that character.
