4) Jon Bernthal
Since kickstarting his career on screens both big and small with The Walking Dead, Jon Bernthal has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s most valuable character actors. He’s a natural scene-stealer, memorable in everything from The Wolf of Wall Street to last year’s Sicario, the biggest actor on the screen even when the part’s little more than a cameo.
Arguably, Frank Castle is his most significant role yet – it’s certainly his highest-profile – and in Daredevil‘s second season, Bernthal proves he has the chops to make the leap to leading man.
Bernthal has played it unhinged before – in Fury and Wolf – while he’s also done sinister (see Sicario and The Walking Dead) and sensitive (see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl). As Frank Castle, Bernthal brings all those sides of himself together to make one combustible whole.
He is a big part of why Castle is so compelling: through Bernthal, Castle’s a layered character that’s not quite hero or villain, but one seriously damaged human being (much like Wilson Fisk). Any series would kill to have an actor like that, bringing an already fully-formed character along with him for the main role.