Miles Teller

Miles Teller debuted in Rabbit Hole in 2010 and spent three years as the most promising young actor in American independent film, a category that has eaten better people. The Spectacular Now established what he was for: charm with a crack running through it, a young man whose likeability is the symptom rather than the cure.

Whiplash is the performance the career rests on. It works because Teller plays Andrew as unpleasant, obsessive and not obviously talented enough to justify what he does to himself, and because he learned to drum well enough that the camera can stay on his hands. Remove either half and the film falls apart. It brought him a BAFTA Rising Star nomination and a run of offers he mostly took.

That is where it went wrong for a while. The Divergent trilogy gave him nothing to play, the 2015 Fantastic Four is the kind of failure that ends careers, and for several years afterwards the worthwhile roles were real people in mid-budget dramas: War Dogs, Bleed for This, Only the Brave, Thank You for Your Service. Top Gun: Maverick repaired everything. Rooster is not a complicated part, but Teller understands that his job is to carry a dead man's shadow around the edge of someone else's film, and he does it without ever competing for the camera. He has stayed busy since, in The Gorge, on television in The Offer, and in the biopic Michael.