John Kavanagh

Count the priests. Father Carlin in Dancing at Lughnasa, Reverend Benham in The Invisible Woman, Reverend Smith in Closing the Ring, Canon Murtagh in Widows' Peak, Cardinal Campeggio in The Tudors, a cardinal in Some Mother's Son, Le Gris' priest in The Last Duel. John Kavanagh has spent forty years being cast as the man who knows what God thinks and is not going to be argued out of it.

He is an Irish stage actor by formation, with a Drama Desk nomination in 1989 for a revival of Juno and the Paycock, and he has worked in more than twenty films. In the catalog the earliest is The Country Girls in 1983, and the 1990s Irish cinema wave gave him a steady run: Into the West, Circle of Friends, The Butcher Boy.

The international jobs are the ones you have seen. Craig in Braveheart, Parmenion in Alexander, Arturo Toscanini in Florence Foster Jenkins, that priest in The Last Duel. In each case he is doing the same difficult thing: arriving cold into a very large film and making a small part feel like it has a life outside the frame.

Then Vikings gave him The Seer, and a career of quiet authority turned into something genuinely strange. He plays prophecy as a physical burden rather than a special effect, and it is the reason a supporting actor of thirty years standing suddenly acquired a global audience.