Anthony Edwards

Anthony Edwards spent the early 1980s in teen comedies and was good enough at them to have been trapped there for good. He is a stoner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982, Gilbert in Revenge of the Nerds in 1984 and again in its 1987 sequel, Lance in The Sure Thing, Jonathan Moore in Gotcha!, and then Goose in Top Gun in 1986.

What he does better than nearly anyone of that generation is decency. Goose is the only person in Top Gun with nothing to prove, and the film needs that contrast or it has no floor to stand on. The same quality carries Miracle Mile in 1989, a small apocalyptic picture built entirely on whether you believe an ordinary man in a panic, and it remains the best evidence in his filmography that a different career was available.

Television took him instead. He played Dr. Mark Greene for the first eight seasons of ER from 1994, won a Golden Globe and six Screen Actors Guild awards for it, and was nominated for four consecutive Primetime Emmys. He also holds a Primetime Emmy for outstanding television movie. ER is the defining performance and it cost him a decade of film work, of which Zodiac, where he plays William Armstrong, is the tantalising sample.

Since then he has worked steadily without chasing leads: Brains in Thunderbirds, a voice in Planes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Big Sur, Alan Reed in Inventing Anna, Bruce Dunlevie in WeCrashed, a judge in Law & Order True Crime. He directs as well. The through line is that he has never once appeared to be reaching.