David Ramsey

David Ramsey spent the late nineties in the parts you get before anyone knows your name: a student in The Nutty Professor, Londell in Con Air, Bill in Three to Tango, a lifeguard in A Very Brady Sequel. Then steadier work, Sidney Parker in Pay It Forward, Will Bennett on Ghost Whisperer, Anton Briggs across Dexter. He was born in Detroit in 1971.

Then Arrow, and John Diggle, which turned into one of the odder achievements in modern television. Diggle began as the bodyguard standing behind the hero and became the emotional ballast of an entire shared universe, and Ramsey carried him across Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow, where he also played Bass Reeves, plus a recurring alternate-universe version on Superman & Lois. That is most of a decade spent being the adult in the room on somebody else's superhero show.

He is good at exactly that: an unfussy authority that makes the people around him look more serious than the writing does. The performance never asks for the spotlight and the shows would have collapsed without it.

The cost is visible in the rest of the list. His one real lead film role is Joseph in Mother and Child (2009), and the Arrowverse years left little time for anything else, a few supporting film parts and Mayor Poole on Blue Bloods. He also directs, which reads like an actor building the career the casting never offered.