Sean Pertwee

Sean Pertwee is the son of Jon Pertwee, who played the third incarnation of the Doctor, and he has spent a career avoiding the obvious version of that inheritance. His own run began in British films of the nineties: Martin in I.D., Tommy in Shopping, JC in Blue Juice, Sean in Love, Honour and Obey.

Nobody in British film delivers an order better. Sgt. Harry Wells in Dog Soldiers is the definitive version, a soldier who keeps a squad's morale up with insults and never once stops being frightening. He plays variations on that man in Soldier, in Event Horizon as Smith, in Doomsday and in Mutant Chronicles. The voice does most of the work, which is also why he has had a parallel career as a narrator, and why Equilibrium and The 51st State feel like deliberate detours from the same instrument.

Television handed him the role likely to outlast everything else. Alfred Pennyworth across five seasons of Gotham, from 2014 to 2019, rewrites a character usually played as a butler with opinions into a former soldier who happens to run a house, and Pertwee sustains that idea for the whole run. Around it sit Gareth Lestrade in Elementary, Hugh Beringar in Cadfael, Julius Caesar in Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire and Inspector Lejeune in The Pale Horse.

Nearly four decades in and the pace has not dropped: The Invitation, Duchess, NCIS: Tony & Ziva. Very few British character actors stay this employable for this long.