Nestor Carbonell

The 1990s had Nestor Carbonell in sitcoms, most visibly as Luis Rivera on Suddenly Susan. Born in New York in 1967, he spent that decade as a dependable comic supporting player before a run of dramatic jobs turned him into one of the more distinctive character faces on American television. He directs and writes as well, which shows up in how economically he plays a scene.

His specialty is the man who knows more than he is saying and does not expect to enjoy telling you. Richard Alpert on Lost is the definitive version, a figure who sits slightly outside the show's own timeline, played with a stillness that had an entire audience theorising about him for years. Bates Motel handed him the opposite problem, a sheriff required to be the sane adult in a story with no sane adults, and Carbonell found the tired decency in it. The Morning Show uses him for warmth instead, as a weatherman whose moral streak keeps getting him into trouble.

The film work is smaller and more decorative. Christopher Nolan cast him as the Mayor of Gotham across The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, a part that mostly requires standing in a good suit looking governmental, which he does well. The late upgrade came from Shogun, where he played the Portuguese pilot Rodrigues and won the 2024 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, at a level of production his earlier work rarely reached.