Louisa Krause

College drama, then the off-Broadway grind, then the New York-shot guest spots that keep a young actor housed. Krause's first film was The Babysitters, as Brenda Woodberg.

Independent film is where the career actually happened. In a single year she turns up as Zoe in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Shannon in Return and the front desk girl in Young Adult: three small parts in films about women whose grip is slipping, and she is precise at the exact job those films need, which is being the ordinary person standing next to somebody who is not.

The lead came from television. Anna Garner in The Girlfriend Experience is the most exposed work on this list in every sense, and it asks her to play transactional intimacy without either winking at it or apologising for it. Few actors are offered that and fewer come out the other side with the performance intact.

Since then she has been the reliable presence in mid-budget films: Carla Pfeiffer in Dark Waters, April in Skin, Loretta in Woman Walks Ahead, Carrie in Here Today, the title role in Maggie Moore(s), May in The Dive, and voice work as Amber in the animated Cryptozoo. It is a career built on taste in projects rather than on size, which tends to age better.