Here’s a question: Can you think of a single time when you’ve watched John Goodman in a movie and thought, “I think he’s phoning this one in.” The answer to that ludicrous query is a resounding, “No, of course not,” because Goodman has always been, and will always be, the patron saint of ‘Actor who makes something better simply by being in it.’ Seriously, the guy has never missed, and I can prove it.

Let’s say you’re watching a Coen brothers movie, and Goodman shows up. It could be as a major character, or a one-scene weirdo, but you can be guaranteed he’ll darn near steal the show. What about if you’re watching a high-class Hollywood thriller like Argo, Flight, or Patriots Day? You best believe it’ll improve ever-so-slightly when he comes on-screen. Hell, Goodman has the power to be awesome in bad movies, too, such as his scintillating shaven-headed turn in Mark Wahlberg’s boring-as-sin The Gambler or the equally scary ‘Bones’ Darley in James Wan’s Death Sentence.

Shea Whigham

I first laid eyes on Shea Whigham in Boardwalk Empire way back in 2010, and I pretty much immediately knew, “This is my guy.” As Sheriff Eli Thompson in that excellent HBO prohibition crime saga, something about him was captivating. Maybe it was the slightly wry, squinty-eyed delivery of every line of dialogue, or maybe it was his ability to make Eli sympathetic, despite being a corrupt scuzzball. Whatever it was, it was magic.

Over the ensuing 15 years, Whigham continued to be “that guy” in countless movies and TV shows. Sometimes he’d steal one scene in Sicario: Day of the Soldado or The Wolf of Wall Street; other times, he’d anchor shows like Perry Mason or Vice Principals by playing characters who exploited his gift for comedy. By the time he took up a starring role as the guy chasing Ethan Hunt across the world in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, it almost felt like a family member had made it to the big time.

Christine Baranski

When I was growing up, I knew Christine Baranski best as Maryann Thorpe on Cybill Shepherd’s imaginatively-titled sitcom Cybill. As Thorpe, Baranski was an absolute hoot, and every episode was improved by her money-grubbing, vicious, acid-tongued, hard-drinking presence. She was the type of character who would make you wonder, “Why would anyone be friends with this woman?” and that sort of person often makes for the best sitcom scene-stealer.

In her post-Cybill decades, though, Baranski has become the very definition of upper-class, on-screen sophistication, whether that be in her long-running Good Wife/Good Fight role as the women’s rights-championing lawyer Diane Lockhart, or in big screen roles in the likes of Mamma Mia!, Cruel Intentions, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Once again, Baranski is similar to John Goodman in that she can make bad material sing, such as in the lamentable A Bad Moms Christmas, or her recurring role as Dr Beverly Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory. She was nominated for four Emmys for that part, people. Four.

Steve Buscemi

Over the years, Steve Buscemi has lent his signature twitchy, funny, and somehow vulnerable energy to so many movies and shows that it would be impossible to remember them all. To me, he’ll always be a combination of Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs and the hapless Carl Showalter in Fargo, because they were the first things I remember seeing him in. It means I’ll immediately think he doesn’t like tipping waitresses, and that people will always describe him as “a little guy, kinda funny lookin.’”

Obviously, though, Buscemi is so much more than those roles, and he never fails to make any movie or show better simply by being there. He stole the show when he was on-screen in Con Air as a placid serial killer who even scared the other convicts on board the titular plane; he did superb work on shows like The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire; and his willingness to shoot minor yet hilarious cameos in many of his buddy Adam Sandler’s movies is endlessly heartwarming. Oh, and the guy has dramatic chops, too, as Ghost World can attest to.

JK Simmons

For the longest time, it seemed like JK Simmons would always be best known for his thigh-slappingly funny turn as J Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies. The man had always been one of America’s greatest character actors, going back to his days on the HBO prison drama Oz, but he seemed to forever fly under the radar. Over the years, his career definitely picked up steam, and he became “that guy” from movies like Juno, Burn After Reading, and Up In The Air – but then came 2014’s Whiplash.

Suddenly, with his genuinely bowel-loosening performance as the world’s most terrifying drum teacher in Damien Chazelle’s debut film, “that guy” JK Simmons became “the” JK Simmons. Incredibly, though, despite winning ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the Oscars for the role, he didn’t abandon his status as character actor extraordinaire. If anything, he now appears in even more movies, shows, and video games than ever before, just for the love of the game – and they’re all better because he took the gig.

Allison Janney

When Allison Janney won the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar for her towering performance as the abusive LaVona Golden in I, Tonya, it felt like a coming-out party for an actor who had spent almost three decades improving every single project she touched. Whether it was her breakout role as CJ Gregg on The West Wing, which deservedly nabbed her four Emmy awards, or her versatile supporting turns in movies like American Beauty, The Hours, The Ice Storm, and Bombshell, Janney was always reliably excellent.

Brilliantly, though, winning an Oscar didn’t make this character actor extraordinaire change her career path one iota. She continued being far and away the best thing about the ropey CBS sitcom Mom for another four years, and cameoed in the horror movie Ma. Then, she had a go at becoming a late-period action star with the Netflix thriller Lou, and played a steely military leader in Gareth Edwards’ The Creator. Were these movies any good? Not really. But was Janney awesome in them? Yep.

Scoot McNairy

Unless you’re a movie nerd, you’re unlikely to know Scoot McNairy’s name, despite it being one of the most bizarre monikers in the business. The artist born John McNairy, who was nicknamed ‘Scoot’ as a baby because of how he scooted across the floor on his butt, has been plugging away for the last 15 years on the big and small screens, and has been in so many large-scale projects that his face will certainly be familiar, even if his name isn’t. I remember first clocking McNairy in the 2010 low-budget horror Monsters, and within a few years, he was appearing in supporting parts in Argo and Killing Them Softly.

Over the years, he excelled within the niche of playing nervous, on-the-edge types in movies like Gone Girl, Black Sea, Destroyer, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, before notching arguably his most substantial big-screen role in the 2024 horror, Speak No Evil. That movie perfectly showcased what McNairy added to his arsenal over the years with tougher performances in Narcos: Mexico and A Quiet Place Part II – a darkness and inner resolve beneath his twitchy exterior.

Margo Martindale

These days, Margo Martindale is best known for starring in a host of great television shows released in the last 20 years. Her list includes heavy hitters like Dexter, The Americans, The Good Wife, New Girl, and Suits, but her most significant work was undoubtedly as the tough, uncompromising rural crime boss ‘Mags’ Bennett in Timothy Olyphant’s excellent modern-day western Justified. Through that role, Martindale became someone I will always love to see on-screen, and will never fail to marvel at her ability to improve whatever she is a part of.

In truth, though, long before she immortalised herself as a woman who would rather kill herself by drinking poisoned moonshine than go to prison, Martindale enjoyed a long career as one of Hollywood’s most reliable presences. In the ’90s, she was a small but vital part of movies like Days of Thunder, Dead Man Walking, and Practical Magic, and throughout the ’00s, her roles only got bigger and more impressive, until she finally reached ‘peak Martindale’ aka acting Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep off the screen in 2013’s August: Osage County.

Jimmi Simpson

When the latest season of Black Mirror dropped on Netflix, it provided a welcome return for one of the series’ greatest episodes. Best of all, though, ‘USS Callister : Into Infinity’ brought with it the triumphant return of a character played with craven, heartless, callous joy by Jimmi Simpson, an actor who should be a much bigger star than he is. As video game mogul James Walton, Simpson is so skin-crawlingly villainous and greedy that the only rational responses are to punch him in the face or laugh at his shamelessly self-serving antics.

Simpson hasn’t just been catching the eye and sprinkling his fairy dust on every project for the past couple of years, though; he’s been doing it for decades. Picture his harrowing role at the spine-tingling close of David Fincher’s Zodiac, or his fun action movie turns in White House Down and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. For my money, though, his deeply troubling performance as William, the (spoiler) younger version of Ed Harris’ terrifying Man in Black in HBO’s Westworld is next-level stuff, and should have led to a thriving movie career.

There was a period in the mid-’00s when it seemed like Hollywood wanted to push the beguiling French star Eva Green as a new sex symbol. The one-two punch of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and her turn as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale certainly seemed to point the way to the top of the mountain, but it never quite panned out like that. Whether that was purposeful or not, I’m not sure, but instead of becoming a cookie-cutter leading lady designed to make men drool, Green embarked on a career defined by odd, offbeat, weird roles – and it suited her down to the ground.

Over the past 15 years, Green has dabbled with big-budget Hollywood fare and even flirted with becoming Tim Burton’s new raven-haired Goth muse for a while. However, she truly excels in riskier indie projects like the brutal western The Salvation, the affecting astronaut drama Proxima, and the bizarre horror Nocebo. Hell, even when she returned to the world of blockbusters, it wasn’t in anything as rote as a Marvel movie. Instead, she played the intimidating villain of a two-part French adaptation of Dumas’ classic novel, The Three Musketeers – and she improved those movies tenfold.