Antony Starr
Antony Starr is an actor, born 1975.
Two hit series in two countries came before the one everybody knows. Antony Starr, from Auckland, played the dual roles of Jethro and Van West in the New Zealand series Outrageous Fortune from 2005 to 2010, then took the lead in the Cinemax thriller Banshee as Lucas Hood from 2013 to 2016, before The Boys made him internationally famous as Homelander from 2019 to 2026.
Homelander is the performance, and the reason it works is the voice. Starr plays a man whose public face is a corporate product, a strained, sunny broadcast register that keeps sliding upward into something petulant and infantile whenever the mask slips, and the switch between the two happens mid-sentence rather than between scenes. It is a very technical piece of acting dressed up as camp, and the show would collapse without it. Banshee got there first in a rougher way: Lucas Hood is a man performing a stolen identity, so the part is already about the effort of pretending, and Starr plays exhaustion better than most actors play rage.
The film work has been sporadic and mostly small. He has a supporting part in Guy Ritchie's The Covenant, plays the villain in the 2025 action picture G20, appears in the early New Zealand drama In My Father's Den, and takes a substantial role in the Australian thriller Wish You Were Here.
Movies (8)
TV (11)
Where to start with Antony Starr
The Boys is the obvious answer and also the correct one, provided you can stomach the show's appetite for shock. Watch the first two seasons for the performance rather than the satire, because Homelander is at his most controlled before the writing starts indulging him.
Banshee is the deeper cut and the better argument for him as a leading man. It is pulp, violent and often ridiculous, but Starr plays the lead with a weariness that keeps it grounded, and the fight choreography is genuinely first rate.
Go back further and Outrageous Fortune is a broad, warm family comedy drama in which he plays two brothers at once, which is a very strange thing to watch after years of Homelander. In My Father's Den is the serious New Zealand film on his record, Wish You Were Here the best of his Australian work, and Guy Ritchie's The Covenant the most respectable Hollywood credit.
Homelander and the recent films
Homelander is the performance: a man performing wholesomeness over something with no floor, and the whole thing lives in tiny adjustments around the eyes. The films the role has bought him since are mostly forgettable, though The Covenant is decent.
New Zealand and Banshee
Before America he played identical twins for six years on Outrageous Fortune, which is a New Zealand institution. Banshee is the bridge: a pulpy Cinemax action series about a thief impersonating a sheriff, and much better than that description implies.