Actor: Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd trained in New York theatre and won awards on Broadway before Taxi made him famous, which is not the background the manic screen persona suggests.

Doc Brown is the defining role, played at maximum energy across three films with no apparent embarrassment, and the character’s warmth is what makes the trilogy work.

Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit is genuinely frightening, and the reveal remains among the most disturbing things in a family film.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was his film debut, and he is unrecognisable in it, which suggests how much of the later work was deliberate construction.