Nawazuddin Siddiqui

For roughly a decade Nawazuddin Siddiqui was the man standing behind other people's stars. Born in Budhana, Uttar Pradesh in 1974 and trained at the National School of Drama, he took whatever came: a terrorist in Sarfarosh, a pickpocket in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., a band singer in Dev.D, small parts in Black Friday and New York. That stretch is long even by the standards of character actors, and it is the reason nothing in his later work carries any trace of vanity.

2012 changed everything at once. Gangs of Wasseypur gave him Faizal Khan, a stoned, watchful heir to a crime dynasty who becomes frightening precisely because he never raises his voice, and in the same year he appeared in Kahaani and Talaash. The following year The Lunchbox handed him Shaikh, a relentlessly cheerful office trainee, and proved he could be as warm as he was menacing.

What he does better than almost anyone is stillness with something moving behind it. Ganesh Gaitonde in Sacred Games narrates his own criminal life with the calm of a man explaining a business decision. Manjhi: The Mountain Man asks him to age across decades as a labourer cutting a road through a hill by hand. Manto puts him inside a writer facing trial for obscenity.

He has also taken the money, in broad villain roles in Kick, Housefull 4 and Heropanti 2 that use his face and none of his ability. He holds a National Film Award, an IIFA Award, two Filmfare Awards and an International Emmy nomination.