Freddie Fox

Acting is the family trade. His father is Edward Fox, his mother Joanna David, his sister Emilia Fox, and he came out of the Guildhall School into stage work at the Old Vic. One of his first prominent screen roles was the singer Marilyn in the BBC's Boy George film, which set the template: bold, androgynous, played entirely without apology.

His specialty since has been entitlement rendered without any request for forgiveness. James Leighton-Masters in The Riot Club, King Louis in The Three Musketeers, King Hugo in The Great, Ser Gwayne Hightower in House of the Dragon, and above all Spider Webb in Slow Horses, a careerist so pleased with his own trajectory that the show can get a laugh from him simply entering a room. Fox does not play these men as snobs to be booed. He plays them as people who have never had a reason to doubt themselves, which is more unsettling and much funnier.

There is a serious counterweight. Freddie Baxter in Cucumber and Banana, and Jeff in Pride, are queer roles he plays with no condescension and no signalling. White House Farm is the hardest thing on his CV: as Jeremy Bamber he refuses to make the man legible, which is the only honest way to approach a real case that is still argued about. In a lighter register, Toast of Tinseltown has him playing a character called Edward Fox, which is his father's name, a joke he commits to completely.