Just a reminder for the busy and/or confused: it’s currently the year 2015. And movies with marriages made up of working women and stay-at-home dads shouldn’t be rare, but they still are. In the new Nancy Meyers comedy The Intern , Anne Hathaway’s character Jules Ostin is an entrepreneurial wife and mother dealing with the growing pains of the thriving online retail company she founded. While Jules spends much of her time at About The Fit’s industrial-cool offices, her husband Matt stays at home to care for their daughter Paige. For the actor who plays Matt in The Intern , Anders Holm, it's a softer and tamer kind of comedy than he's used to performing. In fact, his primary day job is on a series that Matt and Jules probably wouldn’t dream of letting their daughter watch.
Like a lot of smart and proactive comic actors these days, Holm reached his breakout by creating work for himself. After graduating college and studying at the Los Angeles outpost of the renowned Second City improv training center, the actor and writer began putting sketches and web series episodes online. Along with friends and collaborators Adam DeVine (who's also in The Intern) and Blake Anderson, Holm made the leap to cable when Comedy Central greenlit the pitch for their office comedy Workaholics. Now, Holm is on the verge on mainstream stardom. Here are a few of his early projects to get familiar with so that you can say you knew Anders Holm when.
1. Crossbows And Mustaches
Long before the Comedy Central paychecks were coming in, Anderson, DeVine, Holm, and co-creator Kyle Newachek called themselves Mail Order Comedy and produced 10 episodes of this '80s buddy cop parody. Don't let the low production values deter you; it's hilarious.
2. 5th Year
One look at that cubicle and those cheap, style-less button-down shirts and you know that this particular web series was the independent prototype for Workaholics.
3. Workaholics
About to head into its sixth season, Workaholics is the booze and apathy-soaked workplace comedy to challenge the dozens of toothless, upbeat, and generic office sitcoms that've come and gone since TV was invented.
4. "How Not To Online Date"
The Workaholics guys created this instructional sketch for GQ, and it should be required viewing before a guy's mobile device allows him to download the Tinder app.
5. The Mindy Project
Mindy Kaling should have so many casting awards for the cute boys she's invited to populate her series. Holm played a significant role in the development of Mindy Lahiri; her preacher boyfriend Casey was so cool, Mindy decided to leave city comforts behind and go to Haiti on a mission with him. His identity crisis became too much for her, though. She dropped him when he couldn't decide between a life of feng shui, dropping beats, or praising "the notorious G.O.D."
6. Top Five
Chris Rock wrote and directed this 2014 romantic comedy. As you can see from this promotional featurette, it required Holm to share quite a bit of himself in an unforgettable scene with leading lady Rosario Dawson.
7. Unexpected
In a sign of more mature roles to come, Holm plays a dad-to-be in this independent drama about a teacher (Cobie Smulders) who goes through her unplanned pregnancy around the same time as one of her students.
TV comedy domination is about to make way for feature film stardom, so keep an eye on Anders Holm.
