Barry Sloane
Barry Sloane is an actor, born 1981.
Liverpool produced Barry Sloane, and British television used him first: soap work including Hollyoaks Later, then the television films Pleasureland and The Mark of Cain, both of which collected recognition from the Royal Television Society and BAFTA. In 2010 he made his West End debut in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, a play whose reputation has only grown since.
American television took him in 2011 for Revenge, where he played Aiden Mathis, and he has worked mainly in that market ever since. He is good at a specific thing: men who are competent, contained and faintly dangerous, where the threat sits in what they decline to say. SIX cast him as the leader of a Navy SEAL team, and the same discipline carries the police and military parts that followed on Longmire, The Whispers, L.A.'s Finest and Bluff City Law.
His accent is the practical reason he keeps landing American network leads, and the range has widened lately. Destruction in The Sandman asked for warmth instead of menace and he found it, and British series have taken him back for The Bay, Passenger, The Hack and The Cage. It is a career built on being reliable in genres that badly need reliability.
Movies (2)
TV (15)
Where to start with Barry Sloane
Revenge is the obvious start and still the best argument for him: Aiden Mathis is a role with things to hide and plenty of screen time, and the show was built for exactly the controlled intensity he does.
If you would rather see the physical work, SIX is the strongest of the military dramas and the one where his restraint pays off. The Sandman is the outlier and the most interesting recent thing on the list, a weary, gentle turn with nothing to do with his usual casting. Longmire and Bluff City Law are American procedural comfort food. Back home, Passenger and The Hack show what he does with British material now, which is quieter and better written.