Terry O'Quinn

The 1980s put O'Quinn in uniforms and offices. A captain in Heaven's Gate, a sheriff in Silver Bullet, a launch director in SpaceCamp, a detective in Mrs. Soffel, Alex McSween in Young Guns. He was the reliable authority figure, and the industry mostly used him as furniture: the man who signs the form, delivers the bad news and leaves.

The Stepfather, in 1987, is where he turned that against itself. In the title role he plays a man performing wholesome family life so hard that the performance becomes the horror, and the film works entirely because he is completely convincing as the thing he is imitating. It is the performance the rest of the career gets measured against. Cast him as a decent man afterwards and an audience starts watching for the seam.

Television gave him the long roles. Peter Watts in Millennium, Kendall in Alias, Joe White in Hawaii Five-0, Dale Lacy in Castle Rock, Tom Tavner in Patriot, and John Locke in Lost, which brought him a Primetime Emmy for supporting actor in a drama series. There is a Saturn award on the shelf too. Locke works because of everything he built in the two decades before it: a man of absolute conviction whose certainty the audience is never allowed to fully trust.

He has kept working steadily since, in Resident Alien, Emergence, FBI: Most Wanted, Pieces of Her and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, usually as the person in the room who knows more than he is telling.