10 memorable insurance film characters

As a cinema lover, I find surprising that insurance plays a big part in the plots of so many films.

Here is my all-time Top 10 (plus a bonus one!) list of insurance-based characters. If you work in these roles, let me know if you knew the film and more importantly, if you identify yourself in any of them!

THE UNDERWRITER

Hollywood has this thing for insurance technical employees, such as underwriters, analysts and actuaries, often represented as living in their own world and detached from reality.

In Along Came Polly (2004) Ben Stiller is a sad risk analyst who has nothing better to do than to enter information about his girlfriend, played by Jennifer Aniston, in a computer software that measure risk...

"I know that I have a .013% chance of being hit by a car on my way home. Or a one in 46,000 chance of falling through a subway grate. So I try to manage that risk by avoiding danger and having a plan and knowing what my next move is".

In The Truman Show (1998), Jim Carrey is Truman Burbank, a na?ve corporate insurance employee who is unaware that his entire life, where every day looks like any other day, is actually a television show.

In Fight Club (1999), Edward Norton?plays the protagonist, who briefly describes that his job entails the assessment of risk associated with car accidents for an insurance company; though not explicitly stated, he performs the job of an underwriter who uses actuarially derived premiums to benchmark quotes. Needless to say, he has built a whole world that exists only in his mind.

THE INSURANCE AGENT

"Insurance Agent". The word says it all: terribly boring, if not annoying.

To the point that in Take the Money and Run (1969) Woody Allen is tortured by being forced to share a tight underground enclosure with an insurance salesman.

In Groundhog Day (1993), Bill Murray has to repeatedly face the most horrible of the insurance agents, the nerdy Ned Ryerson, who proudly states that his friends "live and die by the actuarial tables". Ned being punched in the face in "Take 4" of this scene is probably one of the most satisfying moments in the history of cinema.

"Do you have insurance? Because if you do, you could always use a little more!"

THE INSURANCE CEO

Rich, powerful, charismatic. But inevitably, corrupt.

In The Rainmaker (1997), Roy Scheider plays Wilfred Keeley, the boss of the insurance company Great Benefit, who is taken to court for denying a bone marrow transplant that could have saved the life of one of their customers.

By the end of the film, Roy realizes that dealing with an angry, rampant young lawyer can be much worse than facing a 5 meter long great white shark.

THE INSURED

Just remember this: in insurance-based films, "insured" always means "not insured".

For example in John Q (2002), Denzel Washington is a desperate father who, since his insurance won't cover his son's heart transplant, takes the hospital's emergency room hostage until the doctors agree to perform the operation.

“My son is dying, and I'm broke. If I don't qualify for Medicare, who does?”

THE LOSS INVESTIGATOR

If you do this job, you've probably come across the most unbelievable stories people make up to justify their mistakes, or to cover their fraud.

In Life of Pi (2012) the two cargo insurance investigators, sent to understand why an entire ship was lost, have to endure a two hours long recount of a boy, a tiger, a hyena, a zebra and a monkey chasing each other on a boat.

Not to mention the flesh eating plants.

Double Indemnity (1944) is a classic in this sense, garnering seven Oscar nominations when it was released and appearing on numerous "best" lists over the years. A housewife who wants to collect on her husband's life insurance seduces an insurance salesman and convinces him to help her murder her husband and make his death appear to be an accident so that the "double indemnity" clause will be triggered. Needless to say the loss investigator on the case just refuses to buy the accident scenario staged by the conspirators.

THE LOSS ADJUSTER

Not really an insurance character in the iconic cult movie Pulp Fiction (1994), but Harvey Keitel's Winston Wolf impersonates the most efficient insurance loss adjuster, appearing quickly to sort out a catastrophic situation and bringing his client back to business as usual, with minimal disruption.

So much insurance related that Wolf was actually hired as the face of a real insurance company's in their adverts!

Bonus role......THE INSURANCE SKEPTIC

My last character doesn't strictly reflect an insurance job spec, but I'd like to include it as a bonus role. There is always somebody who thinks risks are overstated. Burt Reynolds' quote from Deliverance (1972) is a metaphor for what can happen to a company that does not take the basic steps of risk management.

“Insurance? Tsk…I have never been insured in my life. I don’t believe in insurance. There is no risk”.

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