John Cusack

Cusack was a teen star before he was twenty, running through the 1980s in Sixteen Candles, Better Off Dead, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me and Say Anything..., and he then spent the following decade actively refusing the idol career that was on offer.

His register is fast, defensive, self-aware talk: a man arguing with himself out loud and using irony as armour. High Fidelity is the purest version, with Rob Gordon addressing the camera for two hours and somehow remaining sympathetic, which should not be possible for a character that self-absorbed. Grosse Pointe Blank runs the same voice through a hitman comedy. Being John Malkovich takes the charm and lets it curdle completely, and it is probably the best thing he has ever done.

There is also a long stretch of studio work that plainly paid for something else: Con Air, Identity, 1408, Runaway Jury, 2012, The Raven, a run of thrillers in the 2010s that went more or less straight to video. Some of it is enjoyable. Most of it is not what he is for.

The serious credits reward seeking out. The Grifters, Bullets Over Broadway, The Thin Red Line and Love & Mercy are the work of a real dramatic actor, and he plays Richard Nixon in The Butler with considerably more restraint than the film around him deserves. Over eighty films across four decades, of which perhaps a dozen are essential: a better ratio than it sounds, and a career that has always been more interesting than the rom-com shelf suggests.