Actor: Timothy Spall

Timothy Spall has worked with Mike Leigh across six films, and Secrets and Lies gives him a photographer holding a family together at considerable personal cost.

Mr Turner won him Best Actor at Cannes, and he spent two years learning to paint for it. Harry Potter gave him Peter Pettigrew, and he survived acute myeloid leukaemia in the mid-1990s, which he has discussed at length.