Tate Donovan

Donovan has had one of the most useful careers in American television: constant, unshowy, and almost always as a man whose confidence runs a size too big for him. He was the boyfriend Rachel proposed to far too early on Friends. He was Jimmy Cooper on The O.C., a father drowning in a financial mess of his own making. He was Tom Shayes on Damages, a lawyer who keeps taking the smaller compromise until there are none left. He directs television as well.

The thing he does with a line is take the air out of it. Give him a speech about doing the right thing and you hear a man reassuring himself. That is why prestige ensembles keep hiring him for three scenes: one of Murrow's producers in Good Night, and Good Luck., the senior diplomat among the Americans in hiding in Argo, the entitled parent in The Holdovers, the club owner in Rocketman.

He is also, to a generation, a voice. He speaks Hercules in the 1997 Disney film and the series that followed it, which is comfortably the most widely heard work of his life and the least like the rest of it. The distance between that golden hero and the slightly weak men he actually plays is the running joke of his filmography.