Katheryn Winnick

Katheryn Winnick spent the 2000s in the parts handed to a striking young actress with no leverage: a bit part in Two Weeks Notice, a small role in Failure to Launch, horror ensemble parts in Hellraiser: Hellworld and Satan's Little Helper, a recurring girlfriend on Bones. It is a decade of work that tells you nothing about what she could do.

Vikings changed that. Lagertha ran from 2013 to 2020, and the part offered something almost nobody gets: a woman who starts as a farmer's wife and becomes a ruler, aged across decades, fighting in some seasons and governing in others. Winnick played her without ever asking the audience for sympathy, and she got better as the character got harder. The show around her wobbled as it went on. She did not.

Since then she has had the problem that follows a defining television role, which is that nothing offered has matched it. Big Sky gave her three seasons as a Montana private investigator and was the closest thing to a proper follow-up. Wu Assassins used her physicality. The films, Polar and The Marksman and The Dark Tower and Wander, are mid-budget genre pieces in which she is usually the most convincing person on screen and rarely the point.