Why Gomez From The Time Traveler's Wife Looks So Familiar

The year 2009 brought no shortage of romantic films. Among the more dramatic fare was the tear-jerker movie "The Time Traveler's Wife." Adapted from the book of the same name, the movie stars the hunky Eric Bana and then-romance flick darling Rachel McAdams. Bana plays Henry, a man who suffers from a strange condition in which he spontaneously travels through time beyond his control. McAdams plays Clare, a woman who Henry meets during his normal timeline in a library, but has apparently known at other points of his life. The two then fall in love and deal with the challenges of being married and having a child despite Henry's condition.  

Clare's normal-human companions amid the challenging life she's chosen with Henry include her best friends Charisse and Gomez. The two become a couple over time, though there's a sense that Gomez might harbor lifelong feelings for Clare — in the film, he tells her not to marry Henry because he had a weird experience with him the previous night, as explained by ScreenRant.

The actors who play Charisse and Gomez may not be as well-known as Bana and McAdams, but they certainly went into "The Time Traveler's Wife" with experience and have been working ever since. In fact, there are plenty of places where you may have seen Gomez's actor, Ron Livingston, before.

Livingston kicked off his career in the hit 1996 comedy film "Swingers," playing one of the friends who help main character Mike (Jon Favreau) deal with his breakup and career struggles by having some fun and chasing some women. However, it was the 1999 film "Office Space" that really put him on the map.

In "Office Space," Livingston plays Peter, a computer programmer who hates his job and bosses. His girlfriend convinces him to participate in a hypnotherapy session to improve his attitude. The session goes awry, but he comes out of it feeling relaxed and carefree. He skips work, and after his girlfriend breaks up with him, he asks out a waitress at the local T.G.I. Friday's. When he returns to work amid a downsizing crisis, he begins purposely slacking off to get fired. He somehow gets promoted instead, but when his friends are sacked, he joins them in taking revenge against the company.

As Variety reported in a 2019 article about the film's 20th anniversary, "Office Space" was initially a flop, garnering only $10.8 million at the box office. But after it came out on DVD and cable, it drew a dedicated and widespread fanbase and became a cult classic — so much so that it was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame.

In a 2018 interview with Today, Livingston said he considers "Office Space" to be his big break. "It was my first lead in a studio film, so it was a big deal," Livingston said. "I thought it was gonna be the biggest thing I'd done so far. And I think it was."

Two years after "Office Space," in 2001, Livingston appeared in a very different kind of project. He co-starred in the ensemble HBO war drama miniseries "Band of Brothers," alongside Scott Grimes, Damian Lewis, Shane Taylor, Donnie Wahlberg, David Schwimmer, and more.

Adapted from author Stephen E. Ambrose's book of the same name, and produced by Ambrose, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg, among others, the show was reportedly the most expensive miniseries of all time when it was made. The New York Times reported that, ahead of the making of the series, it was expected that each episode would cost about $12 million.

The series is a dramatization of the true story of the World War II missions of the "Easy Company," a parachute regiment within the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. Lewis led the cast as the unit's commander, Major Richard Winters, and Livingston played Lewis Nixon, one of the many men that served under him."Band of Brothers" and its cast won its share of awards, including the 2002 Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television and six Emmys that same year (via IMDb). For his part, Livingston was individually nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.

Following "Band of Brothers," Livingston landed a variety of roles, including one where he had a 12-episode arc in ABC's crime drama "The Practice," and a role in the 2002 dramedy "Adaptation" starring Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton, and Meryl Streep. Then came a recurring role in HBO's iconic series "Sex and the City."

Through eight episodes from 2002 to 2003, Livingston played Jack Berger, one of the men who Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) dates. As a 2020 Showbiz CheatSheet article noted, Berger wasn't one of Carrie's better flames. Carrie meets Berger at the office of their mutual publishing company, and they agree to get together later so he can give her pointers about the industry. However, he flirts with her while concealing the fact he has a live-in girlfriend. He eventually breaks up with his girlfriend and begins formally dating Carrie, but appears to have lingering feelings for his ex and is also insecure about Carrie's success. Ultimately, he dumps her via Post-it Note.

There was, however, an upside to the role. Livingston told Today in 2018 that he was one of the few boyfriends who got to be in a scene with all of the women of the show. Berger attended a dinner with Carrie and all her friends, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), and he even offered Miranda tough-love dating advice.

"There weren't a lot of boyfriends that got to do the scenes with everybody ... so that was kinda cool," said Livingston, who also admitted to still getting recognized as Berger. I felt like I was, you know, an insider on the show..."

In the decade that followed his "Sex and the City" stint, Livingston starred in various television shows and films, including the 2004 Brittany Murphy rom-com "Little Black Book," the short-lived Fox crime drama "Standoff," and the 2013 horror film "The Conjuring." 

Then, in 2013, he appeared in 12 episodes of "Boardwalk Empire," an HBO period drama set in Atlantic City during Prohibition. According to IMDb, Livingston joined lead star Steve Buscemi in the show's fourth season, playing Roy Phillips. According to Fandom's summary, Phillips is a detective who goes undercover as a food market chain executive and secret criminal in order to get close to an Atlantic City brothel madame and obtain her confession to a murder. The storyline ties into the show's main plot toward the end, as noted in Obsessive Viewer's review of Season 4, and Livingston was charming throughout. The show won multiple Emmys and a Golden Globe throughout its five-season run, and Livingston was included among those nominated for a 2014 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Over the course of the last five years, Livingston managed to juggle three shows — not to mention, several movies along the way. The first of these roles was as Keith Powell in the quirky dark comedy "Search Party" on TBS. He debuted in the fourth episode of the first season in 2016 as a private investigator hired to help find the missing girl at the heart of the plot, per IMDb. Livingston's character arc has involved 12 episodes through the show's five seasons, running into 2021.

In 2017, he simultaneously began starring in the show "Loudermilk," a comedy on the off-beat AT&T-backed network Audience. Created by Peter Farrelly ("Green Book," "Dumb and Dumber") and Bobby Mort ("The Colbert Report"), the show follows Sam Loudermilk (Livingston), a grouchy recovering alcoholic and substance abuse counselor. The show was recently picked up by Amazon for a coming third season, according to Deadline.

Elsewhere, from 2018 through 2020, Livingston starred in the ABC drama "A Million Little Things." He starred in the pilot episode as Jonathan Dixon, a man who seemingly — and unexpectedly — died by suicide, forcing his friends to confront their own demons and secrets. He appeared in 10 episodes through the series' first two seasons, though he was no longer on the show as of its third.