Joel de la Fuente

Thirty years of American television have used Joel de la Fuente as their most reliable source of contained authority. Born in New Hartford, New York in 1969, he first got noticed as 1st Lieutenant Paul Wang in Space: Above and Beyond, a short-lived military science fiction series with a small and permanent following, and then settled into the working actor's pattern: recurring appearances on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit as the response-unit tech Ruben Morales, credits on 100 Centre Street and Canterbury's Law, Dr. Johann Pryce in Hemlock Grove.

Then came the role that reframes the rest of it. As Chief Inspector Takeshi Kido of the Kempeitai in The Man in the High Castle, he plays a secret policeman in an occupied America, and the performance is built almost entirely out of withheld information. His posture does not change, his voice does not rise, and the character's inner life arrives through fractional delays and the placement of his hands. It is the sort of work that only pays off across many hours, and it is the best argument for him as a lead rather than a specialist.

Since then the credits have come steadily and in every register: Losang in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Greg Foster in High Potential, Bobby Mullins in Boston Blue, the General in the animated My Adventures with Superman, Cheng Liwei in Devils, plus film work in Red Sparrow, Master, Return to Paradise, Personal Velocity and Heights. He is not a star and has never been cast as one, which is exactly why the High Castle performance is worth seeking out.