Jason Momoa

Momoa's route in was syndicated television. He was barely twenty when Baywatch: Hawaii cast him, and he spent the following decade in genre series where the brief was mostly to be large and convincing: Ronon Dex on Stargate Atlantis for four seasons, then Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones, a part with almost no English dialogue that made him internationally recognisable inside a handful of episodes.

The interesting thing about him is that the size is the least of it. Momoa is a warm, loose, faintly goofy screen presence housed in the body of a siege weapon, and the roles that work are the ones that use both halves. Aquaman (2018) was the first blockbuster to figure that out, letting him play a swaggering idiot with a conscience before it made him a king.

Restricted to intimidation alone, he flattens. Conan the Barbarian (2011) is a humourless remake that gives him nothing to do, and Justice League buries him inside a franchise that had not decided who he was. Fast X hands him a lacquered, giggling villain and he takes it considerably further than the film deserves. The best of the recent studio work is Dune, where Duncan Idaho is a small part played with real affection.

He has also built a lane he controls. He produces, and he leads long-form television drawn from where he is from: three seasons of See on Apple, then Chief of War in 2025, a Hawaiian historical series he headlines. The queue ahead of him now runs through Dune: Part Three, Street Fighter, Supergirl and another Minecraft film, which is a great deal of franchise for one man.