For much of his career, actor Jeff Hiller felt stuck. He had a string of small parts, often playing rude people in customer service, but he longed for something more substantive. Then he landed the role of Joel, a sympathetic and supportive friend with a great sense of humor, on the HBO series Somebody Somewhere .

"I'm someone who is warm and likes to laugh and is joyful. ... [Playing Joel] felt very like something I really knew how to do," Hiller says. "He did feel a lot more like me rather than putting on a scowl and acting."

As he writes in his new memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success , Somebody Somewhere was the big break Hiller had been hoping for for decades. The show centered on a 40-something woman named Sam, played by Bridget Everett

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