Richard Kind Is the Perfect Second Banana

Richard Kind is the Platonic ideal of a character actor. When he shows up in something—as Larry David’s cousin in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” as Rudy Giuliani in “Bombshell”—you’re in for an “Oh, it’s that guy! I love that guy!” moment. With his Borscht Belt rhythms and his talent for tetchiness, Kind seems, at sixty-eight, like a throwback to Paul Lynde or Dom DeLuise: combustible comic personalities who added a dollop of whipped cream to the great pancake of show business. “I can’t be the Bob Newhart or Mary Tyler Moore, the maypole in a sitcom,” he told me recently. “I’m a satellite character.” Despite his hundreds of acting credits, from Stephen Sondheim musicals to Pixar cartoons, Kind has what one might call a Goldilocks level of fame: beloved by everyone in the know, but not too famous to get mobbed by fans, like his close friend George Clooney is.