Toby Jones

His first starring film role arrived with a curse attached. Infamous (2006) cast him as Truman Capote, but the studio held the release for a year to avoid competing with Capote, which was already in theaters during awards season. The film landed quietly and left.

That should've been a career setback, but it barely registered. He'd already voiced Dobby in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Then 2011 brought four high-profile films in a single year: Captain America, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, My Week with Marilyn, The Adventures of Tintin. He didn't need a star vehicle. He needed casting directors who kept finding reasons to call him back.

A four-part ITV drama about a post office accounting scandal doesn't sound like career-defining television. But Mr Bates vs The Post Office (2024) did something almost no drama manages: it changed the law. He played Alan Bates, the sub-postmaster who spent two decades fighting the Post Office's faulty Horizon software. Within three weeks of broadcast, Parliament was debating it. Paula Vennells had her CBE revoked after a petition hit 1.2 million signatures. Two Acts of Parliament followed.

He's kept the pace since, taking on Mr Burton (2025) and Iago opposite David Harewood's Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The Hollywood Reporter called him "the U.K.'s busiest actor," which is less a compliment than a job description.

His father, Freddie Jones, played the Bytes character in The Elephant Man and spent years on Emmerdale. He grew up in Oxford surrounded by people who talked about feelings for a living and has said he found it exhausting.

He gets more fan mail for Dobby than for any other role, which is funny for an actor nobody can pick out of a lineup. He can't look at reviews on social media. "Even if there's good stuff, I'd be looking for the bad stuff," he's said. "It can't be all good, there must be some shit." That anxious perfectionism is probably why writers keep casting him as men who are quietly, methodically losing control.