Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is making waves in theaters worldwide right now. After opening alongside Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the two films have jointly become the movie-going event of the summer. Throughout his career, Nolan has developed a reputation for telling dramatic and thematically complex stories, and Oppenheimer is certainly no exception. The film is one of the most challenging in his filmography, and it has already solidified its place as a front-runner this awards season.
One of the most impressive aspects of Oppenheimer is the film’s extensive cast. A few years ago, when news of this cast was first making its way into the Hollywood news stream, social media was full of comments and memes about how literally every actor in the industry was going to be in Oppenheimer. That’s not too far from the truth, as Nolan has said he cast as many recognizable actors as he could in order to make the film’s countless characters more memorable and different from one another. This means that there are many noteworthy supporting actors in the film that were either minimally featured in the marketing or not at all. Here are 13 supporting actors in Oppenheimer that you might be surprised to see.
Alden Ehrenreich
In recent years, Alden Ehrenreich has been most well-known for his portrayal of the iconic Star Wars character Han Solo in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. While he is excellent in that role and gets a lot of unnecessary hate for his performance there, Ehrenreich is a performer whose talents extend much beyond that film. In Oppenheimer, Ehrenreich plays a Senate aide to Robert Downey Jr.’s Lewis Strauss. The two of them spar throughout the film, and Ehrenreich really holds his own against Downey. His performance is quietly one of the most impressive in the film, and we hope he gets a lot more work as a result.
Mathias Schweighöfer
Mathias Schweighöfer is a German actor who has been featured in many German-language films, but he has only recently started to be featured in major Hollywood films. Prior to his part in Oppenheimer, Schweighöfer would be most recognizable to American audiences for his role in Zack Snyder’s 2021 film Army of the Dead and its subsequent prequel Army of Thieves, which Schweighöfer directed himself.
In those films, he plays the character of Ludwig Dieter, who is a master safecracker. Schweighöfer only appears briefly in Oppenheimer, but he plays the crucial role of the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was a leader in Germany’s efforts to build their own atomic bomb during World War II.
Rami Malek
Rami Malek has been working in Hollywood for a while now, though his profile really skyrocketed after his Oscar-winning performance as Freddie Mercury in 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Since then, Malek has only appeared in a few projects, such as last year’s Amsterdam and 2021’s No Time to Die, in which he was added to the lengthy canon of great Bond villains.
Malek plays the small role of David Hill in Oppenheimer, and he appears periodically throughout the film, though mostly as a background character. That is, until he is given the spotlight in one of the film’s most pivotal scenes near its conclusion, as Hill testifies against the appointment of Downey’s Strauss to the Cabinet of the United States.
Dane DeHaan
After his breakout role in 2012’s Chronicle, Dane DeHaan was featured in a number of blockbuster films throughout the 2010s, such as 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 2017’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. However, he didn’t really get to use much of his dramatic acting chops in those films. He finally gets that chance in a major film with Oppenheimer, in which he plays General Kenneth Nichols. He was a stern-faced general who was in charge of much of the Manhattan Project’s security, which in turn put him at odds with Oppenheimer on numerous occasions.
Josh Peck
That’s right, one of the most unexpected inclusions in the cast of Oppenheimer is the influencer and former star of Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh, Josh Peck. The actor/comedian has continued to work in both film and TV since his time on the hit show, but his work has largely consisted of comedic roles. His part in Oppenheimer, which is another fairly minor role, is unlike anything he’s done before. In the Nolan film, he plays the role of Kenneth Bainbridge, who was a physicist Oppenheimer recruited to the Manhattan Project and who played a key part in the famous Trinity nuclear test.
Alex Wolff
As the star of films such as Ari Aster’s Hereditary, M. Night Shyamalan’s Old and the new Jumanji sequels, Alex Wolff’s presence in Hollywood has been growing for a few years now. He’s another up-and-coming actor who plays a minor role as a physicist working on the Manhattan Project in Oppenheimer. Wolff appears in the film on a few occasions as Luis Walter Alvarez.
David Krumholtz
One actor who is getting a lot of attention for his work in Oppenheimer is David Krumholtz. The actor famously played the Head Elf Bernard in Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause films, and he has consistently worked as a strong supporting actor over the years. He has been featured in a number of films and shows such as Ray, the Harold & Kumar movies, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and the CBS series Numb3rs. In Oppenheimer, Krumholtz plays one of the chief supporting roles as Isidor Isaac Rabi, one of Oppenheimer’s closest friends and a physicist who assisted on the Manhattan Project.
Josh Hartnett
Josh Hartnett plays another one of the major supporting roles in Oppenheimer, as he portrays the physicist Ernest Lawrence, who was a professor alongside Oppenheimer and played a significant role in bringing Oppenheimer aboard the Manhattan Project. Hartnett made a name for himself in the early 2000s, as he starred in films like Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Sin City and the 2001 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello titled O. This is the first time that Hartnett has worked with Nolan, though their paths did cross in the 2000s, as he was once in consideration for the role of Batman in Nolan’s Batman Begins.
Jack Quaid
After finding immense success in the lead role of Hughie Campbell on Amazon’s The Boys, Jack Quaid has continued to grow his career in a number of exciting directions. He played a central role in the new Scream film in 2022, and he has done a lot of great voice acting on shows like Star Trek: Lower Decks and the new series My Adventures with Superman, in which he voices the Man of Steel himself. He appears in Oppenheimer as Richard Feynman, who (you guessed it) was a physicist who was recruited by Oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project. Quaid is given a few moments to shine throughout the film, and he makes the most of them on every occasion.
Casey Affleck
Potentially the most surprising inclusion in the cast of Oppenheimer is Casey Affleck. He is only featured in one scene as the communist-hating military officer Borish Pash. His part in Oppenheimer is little more than a glorified cameo appearance. His inclusion has been a bit of a shock to a lot of viewers, as Affleck’s prominence in Hollywood has somewhat diminished since a number of sexual harassment allegations against the actor resurfaced amid the Me Too movement in 2016. A few months after which, he went on to win an Academy Award for his role in the Kenneth Londergan film Manchester by the Sea. Oppenheimer is, without a doubt, the most prominent project that he’s been involved with since then.
Matthew Modine
Matthew Modine is an actor that has made a major impact in a number of notable supporting roles in major films and series over the last forty years. He played Sergeant Joker in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, in addition to major roles in films like Birdy, Vision Quest, Pacific Heights and, most recently, the mega-hit Netflix series Stranger Things. In Oppenheimer, he plays the engineer Vannevar Bush, who was instrumental in getting the Manhattan Project off the ground. He and Nolan have worked together once before, as he played the Deputy Police Commissioner Peter Foley in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.
David Dastmalchian
Another alum of the Dark Knight films that appears in Oppenheimer is David Dastmalchian. He appears in 2008’s The Dark Knight as a thug working for the Joker. He gets a big moment to shine in that film, as he is the person Harvey Dent interrogates in a back alley, which serves as the beginning of Dent’s descent into becoming Two-Face. Dastmalchian has appeared in a slew of major projects since then, including the Ant-Man films, Prisoners, Dune, The Suicide Squad and Bird Box. In Oppenheimer, he plays William Borden, who is a central part of Strauss’ scheme to dismantle Oppenheimer’s reputation.
Gary Oldman
Finally, another appearance that essentially operates as a cameo is Gary Oldman’s appearance as the US President Harry S. Truman. His voice can be heard over the radio announcing the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, before he appears on-screen later on. The scene serves as one of the most important in the film, as it highlights the US government’s shifting view of Oppenheimer post-war, as well as Oppenheimer’s own changing thoughts regarding the bomb.
Oldman and Nolan have worked together before, as he famously plays Commissioner James Gordon in the Dark Knight trilogy. This isn’t the first time Oldman has played a famous world leader during WWII, either, as he won an Oscar for his performance as Winston Churchill in 2017’s Darkest Hour.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
