Richard Jenkins - a real character

Audiences will recognize Richard Jenkins in the indie drama “The Visitor” even if 99.9 percent of them won’t know him by name.

It’s the curse - and blessing - of being a character actor. Anonymity and near-constant work come with the job description. But Jenkins is front and center in “The Visitor,” a movie which gives him that rare lead role.

He doesn’t disappoint.

Jenkins, along with “The Visitor’s” writer/director Tom McCarthy, visited Denver recently to chat up the new film. McCarthy wrote the part with Jenkins in mind.

“It was different,” Jenkins said of the leading man role. “I had done it before on stage, but I always wondered what it would be like in a film.”

The part of Walter, a college professor who befriends an illegal immigrant, afforded him one of the richer roles in recent memory. His initial scenes show him as a buttoned-down widower who goes through the motions both at work and at home. By the film’s conclusion, he is transformed in subtle but remarkable ways.

“It was a little daunting in the beginning,” said Jenkins, who co-stars in the upcoming Coen brothers film “Burn After Reading.” “But I trusted myself, the screenplay and [Tom McCarthy]. This was the best possible circumstance I could hope for.”