Peter Dinklage

Peter Dinklage's first notable screen appearance, in the 1995 indie Living in Oblivion, has him playing an actor on a film set losing patience with the parts he keeps being offered. Eight years later The Station Agent handed him the corrective: a lead role about a man who wants to be left alone, played almost entirely in withdrawal, and it changed what people thought he was available for.

Then came Tyrion Lannister. Game of Thrones ran for eight seasons and he won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series a record four times for it, plus a Golden Globe in 2011. The performance works because he understood the character's only weapon is talk, so he plays every scene as a man buying time with language while calculating the exit.

His real specialty is contempt. Very few actors can deliver a put down that lands as an assessment rather than a joke, and he does it with timing and a voice pitched low enough that people lean in.

He has used the leverage from the show carefully and, occasionally, not carefully at all. On one side sit Cyrano, a full musical lead, and My Dinner with Herve. On the other sit Pixels, The Angry Birds Movie and a stack of voice work that pays well and asks little. I Care a Lot is the recent one worth defending, where he plays a gangster with the manners of a disappointed accountant.