James McAvoy is an interesting case study when thinking about actors people take for granted. He’s one of a handful of British stars who is famous and beloved enough to lead major Hollywood productions, and his performances in the likes of Atonement, Split, Speak No Evil, and the X-Men movies cemented his status as a leading man forever. Ask any cinephile whether they like McAvoy, and I’d wager they’ll respond with an enthusiastic “Yes,” and that goes for more casual moviegoers, too.

Having said that, McAvoy has arguably flown under the radar in terms of acclaim for many, many years, especially in comparison to some of his peers. For instance, McAvoy has never come within a sniff of an Oscar nomination, even when he was part of an Academy-approved film like The Last King of Scotland. In contrast, his X-Men buddy Michael Fassbender has two nominations to his name, and their Band of Brothers cohort Tom Hardy nabbed a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nod in 2016.

At the core of it, I reckon McAvoy’s career path has seen him be reliably excellent in all sorts of movies, from thrillers to comedies, horror movies to action flicks, and kitchen sink dramas to TV fantasy epics. After a while, people just expected him to be brilliant in everything, so much so that when he delivered arguably his best performance in M Night Shyamalan’s Split (which is actually eight phenomenal performances in one), it wasn’t given the high-level consideration it deserved. Sure, Shyamalan’s movie might have played fast and loose with dissociative identity disorder, but as an acting showcase? It’s hard to beat.

Toni Collette

It’s not unusual to see Toni Collette pop up in an Oscar-bait film, a procedural Netflix drama, and a couple of weird indie movies you’ve never heard of, all within the same year. The Australian actor has been plying her unique trade in Hollywood since the mid-’90s, and while she’s never been a true leading lady, she’s also never short of work. Of course, this is the life of most working actors, who don’t have the luxury of being choosey, but sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if her ubiquity has gone against her at times.

Colette, you see, is an excellent actress, and she’s never given a bad performance. Movies like Little Miss Sunshine, The Way, Way Back, and Knives Out have showcased her aptitude for comedy laced with heartbreaking drama, and her turn in the harrowing rape drama Unbelievable was one of the best TV performances of 2019. Her recent role in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 also showed that, if given the opportunity, she can rise to the occasion and nail a lead role in a big movie, too.

Perhaps Collette has simply been too reliable in too many things over the years, and this has seen her be taken for granted. It might have scuppered her biggest opportunity to break through that glass ceiling of acclaim, too. I am, of course, talking about her stunning performance in Ari Aster’s Hereditary, which is so raw and upsetting that it beggars belief. The Academy somehow conspired to ignore it when it came time for Oscar nominations, though. It was one of the biggest injustices in recent Oscar history, and it still rankles people to this day.

Ben Foster

A few weeks ago, I watched Sharp Corner, a Canadian psychological thriller starring Ben Foster as a timid family man who becomes obsessed with saving people from the deadly car crashes that keep happening on the sharp bend in front of his home. Over time, his obsession grows darker, and he actually begins attempting to cause more crashes, just so he can play the hero. It’s a weird, unsettling, heartbreaking, and bizarrely funny movie, and Foster is incredible in it. His performance could have devolved into a succession of tics and quirky line deliveries, but instead, he rides the line of believability perfectly.

Sadly, though, with no major studio push behind it, Sharp Corner came and went with minimal fanfare. It was an unfair fate for such a finely honed film, and a bummer that Foster delivered a career-best performance in a movie that comparatively few people will see. I’ve always believed he’s one of America’s best modern character actors, equally adept in genre fare, comedy, and drama, and he often outshines the more celebrated stars he acts opposite.

However, because Foster has never managed to truly rise above the fray with one signature role that showcases his talents in a movie that also hits the cultural zeitgeist, he seems resigned to being forever taken for granted. Sure, people think, he’s always good when he turns up in westerns like Hell or High Water, Hostiles, or 3:10 to Yuma, and action movies like Hostage and The Mechanic. But, after enough of those roles, audiences can’t help expecting him to improve the film with his presence, as opposed to appreciating just how difficult that actually is.

Bryan Tyree Henry

I first saw Brian Tyree Henry in Donald Glover’s FX surreal comedy masterpiece Atlanta, and loved his performance as the frustrated rap superstar-in-waiting Alfred ‘Paper Boi’ Miles. Soon after Atlanta, though, Henry was everywhere, from Steve McQueen’s gritty heist thriller Widows and Barry Jenkins’ heartfelt If Beale Street Could Talk, all the way to middle-of-the-road Hollywood blockbusters like Godzilla vs Kong and Marvel’s existential misfire, Eternals.

To his credit, despite being an actor who was almost unknown just a few years earlier, Henry quickly built a body of work that revealed him to be one of the most versatile actors in the business. The Henry that made you laugh in Bullet Train was a far cry from the one who broke your heart in Causeway, for example. Recently, though, I think a few too many easy paycheque gigs, like his voice role in Transformers One, and a couple of middling TV dramas (FX’s Class of ’09 and Apple TV+’s Dope Thief) have dulled his star slightly.

To me, it looks very much like Henry is about to enter a second phase of his Hollywood journey. For the first five or six years, he could do no wrong, and this made people take his multifaceted talents for granted. They thought Hollywood could plug him into anything, no matter the genre or medium, and he’d excel, but it’s not as simple as that. While he hasn’t given bad performances, per se, he has seemingly hit a bit of a wall, and perhaps needs to recalibrate his career slightly in order to move forward as the great actor we all know he can be.

Vera Farmiga

In the last five years, half of Vera Farmiga’s cinematic output has seen her play the same character: ghosthunter Lorraine Warren. Of course, Warren is her signature character at this point, having portrayed the psychic nemesis of every demonic force that goes bump in the night in four Conjuring movies, as well as a smattering of Annabelle and The Nun spinoffs. However, even though I like The Conjuring universe more than most critics (What can I say? I enjoy supernatural hokum), I also recognise that it’s not ideal for a superb actor like Farmiga to be so restricted to one franchise role.

Before she dedicated her professional life to playing a controversial lady who was almost certainly a huckster in real life, Farmiga was always a reliable presence on-screen. She could play authority figures with the best of them, such as in Source Code and Safe House, and made for a really fun villain in The Commuter. I will always love her five season tour de force as the manic, hilarious, ballsy, and downright terrifying Norma Bates in Bates Motel, too, and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas demonstrated she was capable of great sensitivity and stillness on-screen, too.

If anything, I think Farmiga’s success with The Conjuring franchise has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s made her genuinely famous, and she’ll always be Lorraine Warren to legions of die-hard fans. On the other hand, though, it’s potentially resulted in the industry taking her talents for granted, shoving her into a box as a horror star, when in reality, she could be doing so much more. As long as “much more” doesn’t involve her reprising her Marvel Cinematic Universe role in the dreadful Hawkeye Disney+ show. Let’s leave that one in the past.