Joplin Sibtain
Joplin Sibtain is an actor.
A London actor who has built a career out of being believed, Sibtain works the register that keeps genre television standing up: the sergeant, the foreman, the man who tells the hero what the situation actually is. He is sometimes credited as Chook Sibtain, and his stage work, including seasons at the National Theatre, is the part of the career that screen credits under-report.
Genre found him early. He played Tarak Ital in the 2009 Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars, one of the base crew, and later turned up in Nightflyers and in the Netflix series Safe. He also voiced Olin in the game Horizon Zero Dawn, which is a reminder that a good, plain, unactorly voice is a sellable asset.
The two roles most people arrive for are recent and adjacent. In Andor he is Brasso, a Ferrix factory worker whose loyalty is the local, unglamorous kind the show is built to take seriously, and in House of the Dragon he is Ser Jon Roxton. Between them sit two rounds of The Strangers as Billy Bufford, a police sergeant in No Offence and a stint in the double-glazing sales comedy White Gold.
Movies (6)
TV (5)
Where to start with Joplin Sibtain
Andor is the reason to be here. Brasso is a small part in a large show, and the series treats him as the moral floor of Ferrix, the friend who does the practical thing while everyone else makes speeches. Sibtain plays it without a single flourish. After that, House of the Dragon gives him armour and a much shorter leash. Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars is worth digging out for the older, tenser version of the same type, a crewman who knows the base is in trouble before the plot will admit it. The horror pair, The Strangers: Chapter 1 and The Strangers: Chapter 2, are for completists only. No Offence is the better procedural showcase.