List of fictional actuaries explained

Fictional actuaries and the appearance of actuaries in works of fiction have been the subject of a number of articles in actuarial journals.

Film

• The Ice Road (2021) - Varnay (played by Benjamin Walker (actor)); He introduced himself as an insurance actuary
• About Schmidt (2002) - Warren Schmidt is portrayed by Jack Nicholson; the movie mostly covers Schmidt's retirement from an insurance company, and his adventures after retirement
• Along Came Polly (2004) - Reuben Feffer (played by Ben Stiller) is a risk assessment expert, and though not explicitly stated, performs the job of an underwriter
• Are You With It? (1948) - a musical comedy featuring Donald O'Connor as an actuary who is forced to join a carnival after misplacing a decimal point on a statistical table
• The Billion Dollar Bubble (1976) - the Equity Funding scandal retold in the form of a movie, starring James Woods
• Boyhood (2014) - Mason Evans, Sr. (played by Ethan Hawke) mentions at a baseball game that he recently passed his second actuarial exam, and later discusses his job at an insurance firm
• Class Action (1991) - featured Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as father and daughter lawyers on opposite sides of a massive class action lawsuit; actuarial analysis plays a key role in the outcome
• Double Indemnity (1944) - a Billy Wilder film, with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck; possibly the first to feature an actuary; the plot revolves around a murder that seeks to gain advantage from a particular aspect of an insurance policy; an insurance investigator (played by Edward G. Robinson) knows the actuarial statistics and becomes suspicious
• Escape Clause (1996) - Andrew McCarthy plays Richard Ramsay in an actuarial thriller; to quote TVguide.com, "The makers of this direct-to-video release thought the world was ready for a thriller about an insurance actuary. They thought wrong."^[1]
• 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
• Groundhog Day (1993) - Bill Murray's character Phil Connors is pestered daily by talkative insurance salesman Ned, who at one point insists that he has friends "who live and die by the actuarial tables."
• It Chapter Two (2019) - James Ransone plays the adult version of Eddie Kaspbrak, who explains during the Losers Club's reunion dinner that he works as a risk analyst in New York. (In the novel and 1990 miniseries versions of the story, Eddie instead owns a limo company.)
• Saw VI (2009) - William Easton is a health insurance executive who describes actuarial mathematics in a conversation with John Kramer
• Stranger than Fiction (2006) - Harold Crick (played by Will Ferrell), a socially isolated IRS auditor, mentions that he was once engaged to an auditor who left him for an actuary
• Paddington (film) (2017) - Henry Brown (played by Hugh Bonneville) is a devoted risk analyst at an insurance company and uses actuarial knowledge to predict that having a bear in the house will increase the chances of major disaster occurring by 4000%
• Sweet Charity (1969) - documents the romantic life of an actuary, played by John McMartin with Shirley MacLaine as his love interest
• Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001) - starring Matthew McConaughey; the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a housecleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability
• Tron - the character Ram (played by Dan Shor) is an actuarial program
• Zootopia (also released as Zootropolis) (2016) - the character Jaguar is a young tiger that aspires to be an actuary.
• Hellboy (2019) - the character Major Ben Daimio played by Daniel Dae Kim, states that he was once an actuary; and used to assess risk based on a series of complex mathematical equations^[2]

Literature

• The Areas of My Expertise - by John Hodgman; portrays actuaries as prophets who predict the future, and are organized into various guilds; they have various ethics, such as not predicting the date of one's own death
• Batman - comic series which featured a villain named the Actuary (Detective Comics #683-4 (March–April 1995)), a mathematical genius who applies formulae to aid the Penguin in committing crimes.
• Bet Me - by Jennifer Crusie; the main character, Minerva Dobbs, is a thirty-something actuary looking for love
• Un Certain Monsieur Blot - by Pierre Daninos; Mr. Blot is an actuary, who wins a competition as the most average man in France; the book includes the acerbic observation that “there were two kinds of actuaries – those who were still doing actuarial work and those who had found something better to do”
• The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are part of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fantasy series and feature Twoflower, the "actuary and world’s first tourist"
• The Foundation Trilogy - by Isaac Asimov; often considered one of the greatest science fiction works of all time and features "psycho-historians," a sort of hidden priesthood that manipulates politics and economics on a galactic scale to accomplish the goals of peace and prosperity. Part of the theory is that on a planetary scale, people are not predictable but on a galactic scale, the law of large numbers (i.e., the Central Limit Theorem) is valid and therefore, the reactions of the galactic civilization, as a whole, are predictable. Given the characteristics of psycho-historians, they are very much like actuaries.
• The Good Soldier Švejk - Lieutenant Pelikán is "a mathematician in an insurance firm"
• "Hunted Down" - short story by Charles Dickens with an actuary, Mr. Meltham of the Inestimable Life Assurance Company, as its hero^[3]
• Industrial Magic - by Kelley Armstrong; character Reuben Aldrich is the head of the actuarial department at a supernatural organisation; he may also be a necromancer
• Mrs. Warren's Profession - "I shall set up in chambers in the City and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing," says Vivie, the daughter of the eponymous heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play^[4]
• Preferred Risk - by Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey (under the pseudonym Edson McCann); describes a dystopian future dominated by the insurance industry; in Pohl's own words, "the one novel I wrote with Lester del Rey, which was called Preferred Risk, took a year out of my life. It's a terrible book. If you come across it, don't read it."^[5]
• The Rabbit Factor - by Antti Tuomainen; describes the actuary Henri Kosinen who inherits an adventure park. A humorous crime fiction novel.
• The Year of the Jackpot - short story by Robert A. Heinlein; the male protagonist is a former actuary whose analysis of current events leads him to a disturbing conclusion about the fate of the world.
• The Chronicles of Elantra - a series of books by Michelle West; when investigations into a government official occur it is referenced that the Hawks (the police force) have not got the actuaries involved.

Manga

• Homunculus - by Hideo Yamamoto; features Susumu Nakoshi as the story's protagonist, who was an actuary before he told people he was going on an extended vacation; instead, he lives in an old car; he resigns later in the story, and his reason for throwing his job away is still unknown
• Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service - features a malevolent actuary who uses statistics to determine scenarios that will most likely result in the death of particular people

Television

• The Robinsons - sitcom about a reinsurance actuary, Ed Robinson (played by Martin Freeman), who realises that reinsurance is not his passion and decides to rethink his life^[6]
• A Million Little Things - Gary works for an insurance company as an actuary^[7]
• Kim Possible - Ron's dad works as an actuary as first revealed in the 2007 episode, Odds Man In^[8]
• Poker Face - An actuary (played by John Hodgman) is looking to purchase drugs at a concert but is mistaken for a cop in S01E04 Rest In Metal
• Secret Diary of a Call Girl - An actuary (played by Tom Price) visits a call girl after years without sex. He is very shy and gets turned on by making farmyard animal noises^[9]
• Supernatural - in season 7 episode 8 Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!, Dean Winchester claims he was writing an article for "Actuarial Insider" while investigating the suddenly promoted junior salesman to CEO of an insurance company.^[10]

Theater

• I Love You Because (2006) - musical; major character Diana Bingley is an actuary; she suggests some formula-based "dating rules" to her friend Marcy in the key number "The Actuary Song"

Other

• Angel Hare - web series, where one of the characters - Francis - mentions offhandedly that they're an actuary.
• Society of Actuaries - holds a speculative actuarial fiction contest^[11]
• Wordplay - documentary which explores the world of crossword makers and aficionados; makes reference to actuaries as one of three occupations which are particularly adept at crossword solving

References

1. Web site: Escape Clause. TVGuide.com.
2. Byron . Howard . Byron Howard . ByronPHoward . 709631989293264896 . March 14, 2016 . @jordanolling @thejaredbush The actuary's name is Jaguar (pronounced 'hog-u-are') . no . December 25, 2016 .
3. Web site: Archived copy . 2013-01-11 . 2011-07-02 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110702225753/http://www.contingencies.org/sepoct01/dickens.pdf . dead .
4. http://www.the-actuary.org.uk/pdfs/02_10_peoplenews.pdf#search=%22%20%22actuaries%20in%20literature%22%22
5. Web site: Scifi.com. SYFY. 2020-08-08. 2006-07-09. https://web.archive.org/web/20060709155724/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue350/interview.html. dead.
6. Web site: The Robinsons. TV.com.
7. Web site: 'A Million Little Things' Series Creator Turns the Scorned-Woman Trope Inside Out. Nguyen. Hanh. 2018-10-11. IndieWire. en. 2019-09-19.
8. Web site: "Kim Possible" Odds Man in (TV Episode 2007). 2021-07-21. IMDb. en-US.
9. Web site: Secret Diary of a Call Girl Episode #3.3. IMDb.
10. Web site: 7.08 Season Seven, Time for a Wedding! - Super-wiki . 2022-12-23 . www.supernaturalwiki.com.
11. Web site: SOA - Speculative Fiction Collection . www.soa.org . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070715014520/http://www.soa.org/news-and-publications/newsletters/technology/pub-speculative-fiction-collection.aspx . 2007-07-15.

• "Charles Dickens and the Literary Actuary" - September/October 2001 issue of Contingencies, a bimonthly magazine published by the American Academy of Actuaries
• Actuary Australia ("Two Ducks" column - September 2003, November 2003 April 2004, May 2004 editions)