Michael Beach

Michael Beach has one of the most recognisable faces in American television and one of the least remembered names, which is what happens when you are very good at playing men who are difficult to like. He came up through the late 1980s and early 1990s in films with real weight: Lean on Me, One False Move, Short Cuts, True Romance.

His register is controlled anger. In Waiting to Exhale he plays the husband who leaves, and the film gives him nothing to hide behind; he makes the man entirely reasonable inside his own head, which is far more damaging than playing him as a villain would have been. As Al Boulet on ER from 1995 to 1997 he ran the same technique in a sympathetic key, and then spent 1999 to 2005 as Monte Parker on Third Watch. He does not do outbursts. He does the ten seconds before one, and then a decision.

The last decade has turned him into a genre regular: Charles Pike on The 100, a leader whose logic is sound and whose conclusions are monstrous; Jesse Kane in Aquaman, on screen briefly and setting up the franchise's best villain; a detective in the Dahmer series; police and command roles in The Rookie, S.W.A.T., Tulsa King and Saw X. The good news is that the occasional part still arrives that is worth the talent. In If Beale Street Could Talk he plays a father with barely any dialogue and holds every scene he is standing in.