One of the most recognizable, and yet criminally underrated actors in horror and science fiction is Jeffrey Combs. With an impressive 143 acting credits to his name, he’s one of those actors you might recognize, but can’t quite place from where. Perhaps from horror movies, such as Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners or the Re-Animator franchise. But, if you’re a Star Trek fan, you might not immediately know him without all the makeup, though he’s played ten different roles in four series (and one video game) within the Star Trek universe. Combs is as versatile as he is unique, always seeking out odd and bizarre roles, into which he throws himself with zeal and passion.
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He was born and raised in California, and started acting in high school. But his interest in the study of human emotion began as a child, when he started drawing. As he said in an interview with SlashFilm, “Now that I look back, I realize that it was this unformed fascination that all actors have with human behavior, with character, with what a face says.” That interest carried him into acting.
His breakout role was in the horror movie Frightmare. Since then, Combs has continued to explore horror and science fiction, favoring movies and TV shows with bold imagination and lots of room for unique exploration with the acting. Combs likes to “add color” to his roles, making them theatrical and memorable years or even decades later. In that same interview, he explained why most of his characters are a bit darker:
He has honed his acting style in horror and science fiction, ranging from live action to voice-over animation, and even recently, a stage play. Combs’ influence and prevalence in acting is often underappreciated, but fans of the weird and the fantastical surely recognize him and his influence.
Horror - The Ultimate Mad Scientist
Empire International Pictures
Perhaps the genre Combs is best known for is horror. He has become a master of the style, and the best iteration of his many roles in horror is as some kind of doctor or mad scientist. Combs has played more than a dozen different “Doctors”, from the signature Herbert West in Re-Animator, bringing the dead back to life, to the desperate scientist Dr. Crawford Tillinghast in From Beyond, transformed in a horrific way and shrouded with a kind of melancholic doom as he marches towards his fate. Both of these roles are based on stories by H.P. Lovecraft - and both were directed by Stuart Gordon, who Combs had a career-long partnership with.
Another doctor he played was the creepy neuroscientist Dr. Kevin Burkhoff, with peeling skin and missing fingernails, from the series The 4400. Beyond that, he has performed as a whole host of other scientists, inventors, and computer nerds. One of the most fun was in Doctor Mordrid, where Combs played the titular Dr. Anton Mordrid, a Dr. Strange-like wizard who is called to Earth to prevent an evil sorcerer from opening a gate to Hell. It’s a bit surprising Combs hasn’t played more evil wizards, because he fits the casting perfectly. Whether it’s an Irish terrorist trying to spread a deadly virus, or the inventor of a laser-shooting, rocket-launcher-carrying motorcycle, his eclectic and exuberant style of acting has served the movies he’s in wonderfully, making them all the more wild and entertaining to watch.
Herbert West from Re-Animator is probably Combs’ most well-known role. It was his breakout role for his career, as well. His animated acting as the sadistic mad doctor was decidedly unnerving, with the Los Angeles Times saying that he performed with “terrific intensity and concentration,” and Empire magazine calling him “one of cinema’s greatest mad scientists.” Combs would go on to reprise the role twice more in subsequent sequels, which were more bizarre and silly than the original - and that played into Combs’ style perfectly.
But, Combs isn’t always a mad doctor. One of the roles he is often recognized for out in public is as the twitchy FBI Agent Milton Dammers from The Frighteners, who pursues the main character (played by Michael J. Fox) obsessively, trying to arrest him for a series of murders. The FBI agent could have been a fairly normal side character, but with Combs playing him, Dammers ends up being one of the most memorable characters in the movie. And he even plays a protagonist (which is rare for Combs) in the film Castle Freak, which is, like Re-Animator and From Beyond, based on a Lovecraft story.
Sci-Fi - The Man with Many Faces
Paramount Television
Combs is a master of disguise. In the realm of science fiction, he has morphed into various different roles, each of them unique and inspired. If not horror, then Combs’ most lasting legacy is certainly in Star Trek. He is one of the most common guest stars in the series, playing even more characters than you think. If you count the clones of his best character, Weyoun, as individual roles, he’s actually had 14 different performances through multiple series. Most of those were under a large amount of makeup and prosthetics. With blue skin, overly large ears, or facial antenna, he was practically unrecognizable. But his best character was Weyoun, or at least, five different Weyoun clones, in the series Deep Space Nine.
Weyoun was a unique and fantastic character, and was also Combs’ favorite performance. Combs wasn’t sure how he wanted to play Weyoun at first, and what the character’s personality was like, until the first day he was in makeup and looking at himself in a mirror. In that moment, he instinctively decided that Weyoun was the kind of person who wanted you to believe he’s your best friend, until the knife is in your back. “It was a wonderful counterpoint,” he said in an interview with StarTrek.com. “I loved being so evil and yet being so good-natured and pleasant about it.” And Weyoun’s silky smooth and friendly demeanor, tinged with a deep melancholy, only made his sadistic actions all the more evil. Weyoun is killed off quickly, but he was so interesting to the writers that they decided to have him replaced with a clone each time he’s killed. Combs managed to make each new clone feel like a slightly different, or sometimes very different person, despite them being identical - another of the many tributes to his acting skill. He played the complex and nuanced villain excellently, and made Weyoun one of the most memorable antagonists in Deep Space Nine - as well as in all of Star Trek.
Combs has appeared in other sci-fi shows, including Babylon 5, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, and even played Captain Cold in the 1991 series The Flash. He is indeed the many with many faces - including no face at all, when he voiced the superhero Question in the animated show Justice League. Question was a paranoid noir-detective character with a blank, featureless face. The character ended up inspiring the creation of Rorschach from Watchmen, who’s face would morph and change over a cloth canvas.
The Master of the Macabre
Oasis Audio
In recent times, Combs has done a lot of voice acting, appearing in shows such as Star Trek: Lower Decks and Dota: Dragon’s Blood, as well as a recurring role on the bizarre spoof fantasy series Tigtone. He was also recently in the anthology movie Holiday Hell, in which he narrated the events of three different stories; and he appeared in one episode of the new show Creepshow, playing a Nazi - a first for the actor, but a role that he wanted to accept precisely because of that challenge.
But perhaps his best modern work is his performance of the “Master of the Macabre” himself, Edgar Allan Poe. The role is perfect for Combs, who in some ways, has been building towards a performance like this his whole career. Combs was interested in Poe after reading a biography about him. “I was just struck by why no one had ever really told this man’s story,” he said in the interview with StarTrek.com. “To me, he’s America’s Van Gogh, just a compelling, tragic figure.”
The role started with Combs playing Poe in one episode of the anthology series Masters of Horror. But director Stuart Gordon, with whom Combs has had a career-long collaboration, decided to turn the performance into a one-man play called Nevermore: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe. In the play, Poe tells his life story to the audience - his childhood, his marriage, and sharing some of his poems. The role is more serious and solemn than Combs normally does, but it works very well for him, bringing out his best as he showcases Poe’s humor, self-destructiveness, and brilliance. His performance has been called “electrifying”, and the audio version of the play is available on Audible.
The legacy of Jeffrey Combs is lasting - and it continues in many ways. With such a solid background of horror and sci-fi, as well as a stellar new performance as the “Master of the Macabre”, it is exciting to both look back on such a distinguished list of credits to his name, and to see where Combs will take his career now.
