Chandra Wilson

Theatre came first: a New York stage debut in 1991, guest spots across prime-time television through that decade, and a first film credit in Philadelphia in 1993, billed simply as Chandra. She also has a small part in John Sayles's Lone Star, which is a better calling card than most people realise.

Then in 2005 she was cast as Dr. Miranda Bailey in the Grey's Anatomy pilot and has played her ever since. Bailey was written as a wall, the resident who terrifies the interns, and Wilson's contribution was to make the intimidation a symptom rather than a personality: a woman holding a hospital together with no margin for error and no interest in being liked while she does it. Two decades on, the character has moved through every register a medical drama has, and Wilson has kept her recognisably the same person. She won a Screen Actors Guild Award for the role and two NAACP Image Awards, and she carried Bailey across into Private Practice and Station 19.

She has also become one of the show's directors, which is the usual sign of an actor who understands how a set works and wants a say in it. Her feature work is sparse, largely because Grey's has taken the calendar, though Frankie and Alice shows what she does with straight dramatic material.