Rise to Fame
He spent the better part of three decades being respected on the British stage before anyone outside of it noticed. David Hare cast him, Tom Stoppard cast him. Nobody was complaining, but nobody outside British theater was paying attention either. That changed when Love Actually handed him Billy Mack in 2003, a has-been pop star hawking a Christmas single with zero dignity. He was 53. The BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor was almost incidental. The real shift was getting noticed.
In the Spotlight
The Oscar nomination for Living in 2023 reframed him from ensemble fixture to leading man, twenty years into his mainstream career. Kazuo Ishiguro adapted Kurosawa's Ikiru around him, and the result was 102 quiet minutes of a dying civil servant reassessing his choices. He's spent his post-nomination years taking projects in every register, from Amazon action series to BBC drama to Argentine arthouse, which is basically his whole career in miniature.
Side Notes
His hands have been famous since before he was. Dupuytren's contracture, a hereditary condition, curled his fingers starting in his 20s, and younger actors have reportedly complimented him on the posture assuming it was a deliberate technique. He calls it his 'spooky handshake.' He was rejected from RADA and trained at the Guildford School of Dance and Drama instead, which didn't appear to slow anything down. He never watches his own performances, which seems less like humility and more like the work stops being interesting once it's finished.