Part of Lost featuring Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, and Terry O'Quinn.
Rise to Fame
He was a freelance illustrator published in the New York Times before he was an actor. After drama school at Drake in 1976, he couldn't get work, so he drew. He didn't finish his MFA in acting until he was 40, and didn't land his first starring stage role until 43. The pivot came from four guest episodes on The Practice, playing serial killer William Hinks, which won him a 2001 Emmy and put him on producers' radar. Lost brought him in for three episodes as "Henry Gale." The milk-asking scene in "The Whole Truth" convinced the showrunners to make him permanent, and Ben Linus became Rolling Stone's #1 TV villain of all time.
In the Spotlight
Ben Linus topped Rolling Stone's list of the 40 greatest TV villains in 2016. Rather than spend the next decade cashing nostalgia checks, Emerson signed on for five seasons of Person of Interest as Harold Finch, a reclusive billionaire who built a government AI. He's been on Evil since 2019, earning Critics' Choice nominations in 2023 and 2025. He's building his 70s the way he built his 40s: slow, careful, and mostly in control of the room.
Side Notes
His wife Carrie Preston played his mother in a Lost flashback and his fiancee in Person of Interest, which is either spectacularly efficient casting or evidence they simply can't work without each other. The stranger detail is how he nearly missed the Person of Interest pilot: blood clots in his leg meant he couldn't fly, so he took a five-day train from Los Angeles to New York and reportedly arrived the day before production started. The second career wasn't a backup plan.