Tobias Menzies knows you're used to seeing him in the past. "I seem to have got a period face," the Emmy Award-winning British actor, who's journeyed through centures of time to play his characters on "The Crown," "Outlander," "Rome" and "Game of Thrones," told me on "Salon Talks." But in Nicole Holofcener's tart new comedy "You Hurt My Feelings," Menzies plays against type — as a floundering Manhattan therapist whose marriage (to the always perfect Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is upended by a well-intentioned white lie. The role was a challenge he'd been waiting to take on for a long time. "Independent New York films are some of my favorite films," he said. "So to step into that world and make a contribution to that was really exciting."
But the movie doesn't mark Menzies's only present-day role. He played a shy dad for two seasons on Aisling Bea's "This Way Up" and a divorced Londoner rekindling his romance with his ex on Amazon's "Modern Love" — a role that was based on my own New York Times essay. (It's not often in life you get the same man who played Queen Elizabeth's spouse to play yours.)
