Michael Kitchen

Michael Kitchen built a career out of not raising his voice. Before Foyle's War he was one of the most useful supporting men in British film and television: Berkeley Cole in Out of Africa, Clive in The Russia House, George Briggs in Enchanted April, Peter Walsh in Mrs. Dalloway, the King in To Play the King, and Bill Tanner in two Pierce Brosnan Bond films, GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. There is a Hammer horror on the list too, Dracula A.D. 1972, made when he was in his twenties.

Foyle's War, from 2002, made the technique the point. Across nine series ending in 2015 he played DCS Christopher Foyle as a man who says roughly half of what he is thinking and lets the pause carry the rest. The crimes were rarely the interesting part; the pleasure was watching a policeman stay quietly, unbudgingly decent while wartime England made excuses around him. Kitchen is credited as a television producer as well as an actor, which fits a performer this particular about what ends up on screen.

He has worked sparingly since. Later credits include Hugh Perceval in My Week with Marilyn and Jack in White Heat, along with John Farrow in the BBC Four comedy Brian Pern, which put him somewhere his usual register does not go. He remains an actor most viewers can describe precisely and name only on the second attempt.