Jonathan Bailey

The stage came first for Jonathan Bailey and never really stopped. Born in Wallingford, Oxfordshire in 1988, he was working on screen as a teenager, well before anyone was paying attention, turning up as Cyril in Five Children and It in 2004 and as a courtier in Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2007. His accolades include a Laurence Olivier Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award, along with a Primetime Emmy nomination, and the theatre prize among them is the useful clue to how he works.

What he is good at is containment. Bailey plays men who are managing something they cannot say, and he lets the pressure show in the smallest available places: a held breath, a fraction too long before an answer, a face arranged into politeness while the eyes do something else. Tim Laughlin in Fellow Travelers is the fullest version, a decades-spanning story in which almost nothing can be spoken plainly. Anthony Bridgerton on Bridgerton is the same instrument tuned for romance, all clenched jaw and thwarted duty. His comic timing is separate and just as good, as Olly Stevens in Broadchurch, Sam in Crashing, Ash in Chewing Gum and a run on W1A.

The last few years have been very loud. He played Fiyero in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, and Dr. Henry Loomis in Jurassic World Rebirth, which is roughly the widest possible audience an actor can reach in two years. Time magazine included him on its Time100 Next list, and People named him Sexiest Man Alive in 2025. The interesting question is which of the theatre habits survive the franchise years.