Steve Carell

Steven John Carell spent years as a supporting comic actor with an unusual specialty: playing men with no accurate picture of themselves. Brick Tamland in Anchorman is the pure form, a weather presenter operating on about four working thoughts. Bruce Almighty gave him a newsreader coming apart on air. Then The Office handed him Michael Scott, and the character became one of the defining performances of American television, largely because Carell refused to let him be only a fool. He worked on the show as producer, executive producer, writer and director as well, and won a Golden Globe for it. Life magazine called him America's funniest man.

His comic technique is built on the silence after the joke. He will say something appalling and then hold his face still while the room adjusts, and the discomfort does more work than the line did. The 40 Year Old Virgin runs on exactly that, and so does the least sympathetic corner of Little Miss Sunshine.

The dramatic second act surprised people who had not been paying attention. Foxcatcher, The Big Short, Battle of the Sexes, Beautiful Boy and Vice all use the same underlying instrument, an unreadable man who does not know he is being watched, and simply remove the permission to laugh. He also has a parallel career as one of the most successful voice actors alive, playing Gru across four Despicable Me films and the Minions spin-offs, and he has done recent television in The Morning Show and Space Force. His accolades include the Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award.