Jesse Williams

There is a version of this career that is entirely one show, and Williams has spent years working against it. He joined Grey's Anatomy as Jackson Avery in 2009 and stayed for more than a decade, long enough that the character eventually walked across to the spinoff Station 19.

What he is good at is composure, specifically the kind that is a choice rather than a temperament. His characters tend to be people who have decided in advance how they are going to behave and are holding to it while a room comes apart. The Cabin in the Woods casts him as the handsome, reasonable one and then has a great deal of fun with exactly that assumption. The Butler puts him in front of a lunch counter as the Reverend James Lawson, teaching people how to absorb what is about to be done to them, and the stillness there is doing real work. He also voiced and performed motion capture for Markus in the game Detroit: Become Human, a lead role in a story about a machine deciding to refuse.

Away from acting he directs, produces and organizes, which the recent screen work reflects: it is chosen rather than accumulated. Tobert in Only Murders in the Building, Joe Ryan in Little Fires Everywhere, small sharp turns in Your Place or Mine and The Great Lillian Hall. The films have been erratic. The television has been consistently good.