Barry Berkman

Barry Berkman is a hitman from Cleveland, worn down by years of contract killings, who follows a mark into a Los Angeles acting class and finds himself wanting to stay. He's quiet, watchful, and desperate for a version of life that isn't this one. He wants to be liked. He wants to be good.

The premise sounds like a joke — assassin discovers community theater — but Hader plays the flatness underneath it as real damage, not deadpan comedy. His stillness is the whole performance: a man so used to suppressing himself that hope looks almost like paralysis. You root for the impossible thing he wants.