Gil Bellows

The stage came first. Gil Bellows, a Vancouver native born in 1967, trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and built his early reputation in the theatre, in The Snake and the Vein between 1990 and 1992 and Flaubert's Latest in 1992. His first starring film role followed in the 1994 crime picture Love and a .45.

The same year he played Tommy in The Shawshank Redemption, which is a supporting part in a film nominated for seven Academy Awards and routinely voted one of the best ever made. Bellows plays him as pure eagerness, a young man who has not yet learned what the institution does to people, and the contrast with everyone else's caution is what makes the last act move. It is the credit that will open every article about him for the rest of his life.

What followed was television leading-man work rather than film stardom: Billy Thomas on Ally McBeal, then CIA officer Matt Callan on The Agency. Since then he has built a long, unglamorous character career, much of it in Canadian production, playing men with badges and clipboards. He is the FBI agent shadowing Oswald in 11.22.63, a DEA man in Kill the Messenger, David Powers in Parkland, the sheriff in Extraterrestrial, the police chief in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and he turns up in Chucky. He also produces, writes and directs.

The honest summary is that he appeared in one of the most-loved films in history during his first year on screen and never got another part of that size. What he got instead is thirty years of steady employment, which is the outcome most actors would take.