From the time of his onscreen debut in the mid-'80s, character actor Robert Harvey specialized in earnest portrayals of everyman professional types, nearly always in a bit capacity, roles such as firemen, prison wardens, countermen, bartenders, and physicians. He took his premier onscreen bow in the Clint Eastwood-headlined, Richard Tuggle-directed psychothriller Tightrope (1984) and thereafter appeared in dozens of motion pictures over the following decades. These included Above the Rim (1994), The Patriot (1998), The Contender (2000), Reign Over Me (2007), and Nothing But the Truth (2008).