Indira Varma

RADA, then a debut in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, which is a very loud way to begin and would have flattened a lesser career. Varma went straight into British television instead and has stayed there for three decades, building the sort of run that gets called steady when what it really is is selective: Rome, Hustle, Luther, Silk, Human Target, The Night Manager, The Capture, Patrick Melrose.

What she does better than most actors in her lane is play composure as a form of aggression. Niobe in Rome carries an entire domestic tragedy behind a flat expression, and the series trusts her to do it with almost no dialogue of explanation. Zoe Luther is the same instrument in a suit, a woman who made her decision some time ago and is waiting, visibly patient, for the man opposite to catch up. Cast her as a barrister, a priestess or a police officer and the part acquires an edge of contempt that was not written into it.

Wikipedia files her as an actress and narrator, and the second half of that is not decoration. A large share of her recent work is voice: the narrator of Disclaimer, Lady Allura in The Legend of Vox Machina, The Bride in Creature Commandos. On camera she has settled comfortably into franchise work, Tala Durith in Obi-Wan Kenobi, a role in the newest Mission: Impossible, a part in Dune: Prophecy. Ellaria Sand in Game of Thrones is still the credit most people name first, and it works for the same reason everything else does: she can make a silence sound like a verdict.