John Mahoney and why he was so good at his job

We all have a different John Mahoney "aha!" moment. That's how it goes with character actors who serve their material while showing us a little something of themselves: They bring us to them through the story they're telling, rather than demanding our attention at the expense of it.

For some the aha! came in 1989 in "Say Anything ..." in which Mahoney, in one his many gruff but humane dad roles, traded fours with John Cusack and Ione Skye and carefully tethered Cameron Crowe's teen romance to something resembling planet Earth.