JEFFREY WRIGHT

Yeah, I know he did that role: Felix Leiter, Daniel Craig’s James Bond series

Wait, you’re telling me he did THAT role too!: Peoples Hernandez, Shaft (2000)

Following his Oscar nomination for 2023’s American Fiction, Jeffrey Wright is (again, hopefully) much more of a known-by-name quantity. In that singular role, you see his ability to switch between two completely different people on a dime. Transforming back and forth between the intelligent but more-than-slightly haughty Thelonious and his unabashedly hood persona Stag R. Lee, it was fitting that he was nominated for arguably his greatest skill. It’s a skill so potent that, in the year of our Lord 2000, the man played a full-on Dominican drug lord named Peoples in Shaft, and I didn’t know that it was him until six years later when he starred as CIA operative Felix Leiter in Casino Royale. Wright can take over iconic sidekicks, play world-renown artists (Basquiat), unknown androids (Westworld), and real-life politicians (W) without a question about his ability to pull it off. There is a reason some people wonder if he’s a “better” actor than Denzel Washington. I mean, the answer is no, but at least now you know why the discussion exists.

TILDA SWINTON

Yeah, I know she did that role: The Ancient One, The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Wait, you’re telling me she did THAT role too!: Minister Mason, Snowpiercer (2013)

It isn’t just her physical appearance that helps Tilda Swinton melt into so many different roles, but it for damn sure helps enhance her incredible ability to do so. If you need an actor to play an androgynous character without feeling like a cop out, Swinton has proven she is more than qualified with her portrayals of the archangel Gabriel in Constantine and Minister Mason in Snowpiercer. That’s because she is so damn mysteriously interesting, captivating, and capable of anything and everything you need of her. She played polar opposite twins in Hail, Caesar! (and did so again in Okja) because her chameleonic ability is something acclaimed directors know not to waste. Whether being two different people inside one movie, or changing who she is from role to role, Swinton is a master at disguising the real-life woman she is on a day-to-day basis.

STANLEY TUCCI

Yeah, I know he did that role: Joshua Joyce, Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Wait, you’re telling me he did THAT role too!: Merlin, Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

Tucci Gang, stand up!!!! If you are not a member of the Pete Davidson and Sam Rockwell-led fan club, then maybe some of you don’t know his name, but that’s that guy from The Hunger Games (shout out to a perfect SNL skit). You know, the guy with the crazy hair and the ridiculously white smile. Stanley Tucci was perfectly posh, polished, and utterly enthusiastic as Caesar Flickerman, and you would never know (unless you know) that he’s also the creepy, sleazy, disheveled antagonist, George Harvey, in The Lovely Bones (or maybe you never watched that movie because we don’t really speak on it). Instead, maybe you recognize him as the blunt, loyal, and fabulous Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada. If so, you had to have asked yourself how that same guy plays the humble German scientist Abraham Erskine in Captain America. If you weren’t a member of the Tucci Gang before, you should join the club soon because there’s a reward for you no matter your proclivities. Comedy, drama, outlandish, reserved, friendly, or antagonistic, Tucci is the man for the job. Every. Single. Time.

REGINA KING

Yeah, I know she did that role: Sharon Rivers, If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Wait, you’re telling me she did THOSE voices too!: Riley & Huey, The Boondocks (2005-2014)

In the 90s, I knew Regina King as one of a handful of actresses that always played the girlfriend or sister in many a hood classic — Craig’s (Ice Cube) sister in Friday, Justice’s (Janet Jackson) best friend in Poetic Justice), Rod’s (Cuba Gooding Jr.) wife in Jerry Maguire (yes, the Black community loves us some Jerry). She was the quintessential supporting female character with sass and substance. In the 2000s, she evolved into the loving, intelligent, and dependable partner in movies such as Ray, Miss Congeniality 2, Down to Earth, and Daddy Day Care. You may be asking how this proves she’s a chameleon, but I’ll come back to this decade in a second. It was really the 2010s that showed the ultimate range we know of her today, from the Oscar winning role as devoted mother Sharon in If Beale Street Could Talk to the badass vigilante Angela/Sister Night in the Emmy Award-winning HBO series Watchmen. It took almost 30 years for King to get the opportunity to show more than attitude and comedic antagonization towards main characters, but she has more than proven that she knows how to handle comedy, drama, and even westerns (she is EPIC in 2021’s The Harder They Fall). Just to bring the point home, guess what she was also doing in the 2000s while evolving her supportive partner performances: voicing BOTH Riley and Huey in one of the greatest animated series ever put on screen, The Boondocks. Point Made.

GIANCARLO ESPOSITO

Yeah, I know he did that role: Gus Fring, Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul (2009-2022)

Wait, you’re telling me he did THAT role too!: Buggin’ Out, Do the Right Thing (1989)

An interview that Giancarlo Esposito did while doing promotional work for Do the Right Thing is currently making the rounds on social media. In the interview, he talks about how his heritage informed his upbringing and how he approached the film. If you didn’t know, he is a Black Italian man who never fit in with either community because he was never [fill in proper ethnicity] enough. As a mixed-race man, and even more so as a Black man, I know the necessity of code-switching to create the “appropriate” persona for different situations. Esposito is a master at that. Just in the films he did with director Spike Lee, he morphed into the politically outspoken Buggin’ Out only one year after portraying the bougie, college-educated “Big Brother Almighty” Julian in School Daze. You would never think that the actor behind either of those characters would grow into the unassuming, never-would-have-known-he-wasn’t-just-a-chicken-shack-owner drug-dealing mastermind Gus Fring (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) or the ruthless Imperial Officer Moff Gideon in a galaxy far, far away. Frankly, Esposito is a person who gets me to watch movies and shows sight unseen, based on his name only, because I know he can and will play any role as good or better than anyone else could possibly play that particular role. This was recently confirmed when he took over the role of A.B. Wynter in Netflix’s The Residence following the untimely passing of one-of-one actor Andre Braugher. Only Esposito could fill those unique shoes.

ROSAMUND PIKE

Yeah, I know she did that role: Amy Dunne, Gone Girl (2014)

Wait, you’re telling me she did THAT role too!: Samantha Grimm, Doom (2005)

I have almost never hated a character more in a movie than I hated Rosamund Pike’s Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. I have almost never been more interested in a love interest than I was interested in getting to know Rosamund Pike’s Sam Chamberlain in The World’s End. Moving forward after Gone Girl or looking back before The World’s End, Pike may have portrayed less extreme versions of cold-hearted (I Care A Lot) and heartwarming (Barney’s Version), but she continues to be one of the most versatile actors over any and all genres over the past 25 years. She has the regality to play 18th Century English gentry (Pride & Prejudice), ancient Greek royalty (Clash of The Titans), and fantasy-magic user (The Wheel of Time). She has the strength and power to play a British secret agent (Die Another Day), a futuristic scientist (Doom), and a war time journalist (A Private War). She has the comedic timing to play an ignorant, high-society one-percenter (Saltburn), as well as opposite an ignorant, bumbling, lucky-as-hell spy (Johnny English Reborn). Whenever I walk into a Pike movie, I don’t know how I am going to feel about her, but I know it's going to be the most I’ve felt that feeling about any character ever. Or at least it always seems that way.