Some lead and supporting roles are called character roles . Character parts are mature adults who are less obviously attractive than romantic leads. Danny De Vito is an example of a character actor whose range allows him to also play romantic leads such as in the 1999 film Living Out Loud . I am not a personality player. The majority of actors you see will tend to be that, and you will go to see them.
Actors do tend to fall into either the personality or character type.
Another large category of supporting roles are what are generically called types or stock characters . This refers to the age-old dramatic practice of reducing complex human beings down to simplified, almost cartoonish, caricatures. It is a shortcut used by dramatists to provide characters that are already familiar to an audience, thus saving the time normally required to explain what they are all about. Such characters have been around since the classic comedies of the Greeks and Romans, and while their specific names have changed, they remain amazingly similar. Bad guys in general are sometimes referred to as heavies.