Lena Headey

Headey worked for nearly two decades before the role that defined her. She turns up as a young maid in The Remains of the Day in 1993, then moves through a long stretch of British period work and genre pictures that mostly did not travel: Onegin, Possession, The Cave, The Brothers Grimm, St Trinian's. Imagine Me & You in 2006 gave her a rare romantic lead. Two seasons of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles proved she could anchor a series before anyone in America was offering her one.

What she plays better than almost anyone is a woman who has already decided. Gorgo in 300 delivers policy as though it were a threat, and the performance earned a Saturn Award nomination. Ma-Ma in Dredd is a drug baron with a flat, exhausted affect that makes the violence considerably worse. There is no wind-up with Headey: the decision was taken off screen, and what you meet is the consequence.

That is precisely why Cersei Lannister worked. Across eight seasons Game of Thrones handed her long passages with nothing to say, and she played them as calculation rather than reaction. Five Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nomination came out of it, and the wordless scenes are the ones people still cite.

Since the show ended she has used the freedom a famous role buys. She is very funny as a wrestling matriarch in Fighting with My Family, straight-faced and lethal in Gunpowder Milkshake, and a surprising share of her recent work is voice acting, including Morgana across the Tales of Arcadia shows and Masters of the Universe: Revelation.