Ian McShane

A broken leg during a school football match redirected Ian McShane from following his father into professional soccer. He ended up at RADA alongside Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt, and got his first film role before graduating. British audiences spent a decade watching him as the charming antiques rogue in Lovejoy. Americans got there eventually: Deadwood (2004) gave him Al Swearengen, a role he's called the best of his career. He won the Golden Globe at 62, forty-three years after his screen debut. Some careers front-load the breakthrough. His didn't.

At 83, McShane is the genre industry's preferred authority figure. He's played Winston, the Continental's impassive overseer, across all four John Wick films, reprising the role again in Ballerina (2025). Before that, three seasons as Odin in American Gods. Even a single episode in Game of Thrones Season 6 generated more attention than most characters get in a full run. His 2024 film American Star, which he also executive produced, positioned him as an aging assassin waiting for an assignment that keeps not coming. It's either very meta or very on the nose.

The Grace Jones Slave to the Rhythm narration in 1985 tells you something. Producer Trevor Horn picked him because, in Horn's words, "Orson Welles was dead, and I needed a voice." He roomed with John Hurt at RADA, the same class that included Anthony Hopkins. A five-year affair with Sylvia Kristel of Emmanuelle, which started on a film set in 1977, ended his second marriage. He's been with his third wife since 1980 and they live in Venice, California. He paints, has exhibited internationally for decades, and it almost never comes up.