Cole Sprouse

Cole Sprouse has been on television since he was a toddler. He and his twin brother Dylan worked as a pair from the start, and his early credits include Grace Under Fire, Ross's son Ben on Friends, and Big Daddy in 1999. Disney then gave the twins The Suite Life of Zack and Cody in 2005 and a spin-off set on a cruise ship after that, and by the time it wrapped in 2011 he had spent most of his life as one half of a brand.

The credit list shows a six year gap after that, and then Jughead Jones on Riverdale, which ran from 2017 to 2023 and got progressively, gloriously unhinged. Sprouse's contribution was to play it absolutely straight. Jughead narrates the show in the register of a hardboiled novel and the joke is that he means every word. Whatever you make of the series, holding that tone for seven seasons is a real piece of work.

The film career since has been smaller and more interesting than the television. Five Feet Apart is a teen romance built for the Riverdale audience and he is fine in it. Lisa Frankenstein is the one worth arguing about: a 1980s-set comedy in which he plays a reanimated corpse, working almost entirely through movement and makeup with barely a word spoken, and it is by some distance the most alive he has been on screen.