Chris Carmack

Carmack modeled before he acted, and his first significant job used the look directly: Luke Ward, the boyfriend who exists to be the problem, on The O.C. in 2003 and 2004. It is a limited part, and he was better in it than it needed him to be.

What followed was a long stretch of work that asked very little. Horror leads, romantic leads, holiday movies. Shark Night 3D (2011), The Butterfly Effect 3 (2009), Into the Blue 2 (2009), Beauty and the Briefcase (2010), A Christmas Wedding Date (2012), a voice role in the animated Alpha and Omega (2010). None of it wasted, none of it memorable.

Nashville is where the career turned, because it needed something he could actually do. As Will Lexington, from 2012, he had to sing, and sing as a country artist rather than as an actor imitating one, while playing a country singer with a public image to protect. It is far and away his best sustained work, and it is the only role on this page that asks him to be uncomfortable for years at a stretch.

Since 2018 he has been Dr. Atticus Lincoln on Grey's Anatomy, which is the steadiest job in American television and, on this evidence, the least demanding thing he has taken.