Actor: Forest Whitaker

Forest Whitaker won Best Actor for The Last King of Scotland, playing Idi Amin as charming and then not, and the performance works because the charm is entirely genuine while it lasts.

Bird, Clint Eastwood’s Charlie Parker film, won him the acting prize at Cannes, and he learned saxophone fingering for it.

Ghost Dog gave him one of the strangest leads of the 1990s, a hitman following bushido through Jim Jarmusch’s deadpan, and he plays it with total sincerity.

He has directed several features, works extensively in conflict resolution through his own foundation, and has a naturally quiet delivery that directors use as either warmth or threat.