Ben Mendelsohn

Ben Mendelsohn spent two decades as an Australian actor most of the world had never heard of. His break came at eighteen, in The Year My Voice Broke (1987), and for years afterwards he worked steadily at home, in films like Sirens (1994) and Beautiful Kate (2009), while Hollywood used him for the occasional supporting part: a climber in Vertical Limit, an Irishman in Quigley Down Under. Animal Kingdom (2010) changed that. As Pope Cody, eldest brother of a Melbourne crime family, he played menace as something closer to nausea, a man too frightened of himself to be predictable, and international casting directors finally caught up.

What Mendelsohn does better than almost anyone is the weak man handed power. His Orson Krennic in Rogue One is an ambitious middle manager in a white cape, humiliated from above and taking it out downward. His King George VI in Darkest Hour is a nervous man in an impossible job. Even Danny Rayburn in the Netflix drama Bloodline, which won him the 2016 Primetime Emmy for supporting actor in a drama series, works by making you pity the person you were told to fear.

He now moves between franchise paydays and small films that use him properly. Talos in Captain Marvel and Secret Invasion, Sorrento in Ready Player One, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood on one side; the HBO miniseries The Outsider, the Australian drama Babyteeth, and Christian Dior in The New Look from 2024 on the other. He is one of the few actors who can play a man crying and a man threatening you with the same face.