Daniels plays the agency director in The Martian, the character arguing against the rescue. He plays him as a competent administrator making a defensible call rather than as an obstacle, which is what keeps the film's institutional conflict interesting instead of villainous.
He came from American theatre and has continued to work on stage throughout, winning major awards there, and he founded a theatre company in his home state. He is also a musician, and his screen career has moved freely between broad comedy and demanding drama with no apparent hierarchy between them.
Recurring subjects: authority exercised without pleasure, men who take the position nobody thanks them for, and comedy played with complete commitment. He is unusually good at making a character's reasoning visible, and his range between farce and drama is wider than almost any of his contemporaries.
He has won major television awards for a political drama and a western limited series, and his stage work has brought equivalent recognition. His broad comedy work of the nineteen nineties remains widely quoted, and the distance between that and his dramatic performances is the most remarked upon thing about his career.
For viewers who want an actor comfortable at both extremes. Suited to anyone approaching the survival film, and to those who should follow it with either the comedies or the political drama, which will not resemble each other.
