37) ALEXANDER SIDDIG
While the Dornish storyline on Game of Thrones has struggled, it wasn’t the fault of the actors. In fact, it was a treat to watch Alexander Siddig’s measured, regal portrayal of Doran Martell…while it lasted.
The Sudan-born and English-raised Siddig is familiar to us from his parts in Hollywood films big and small, such as Ajay in Reign of Fire (2002), Imad in Kingdom of Heaven (2005, alongside Thrones castmates Nikolai Coster-Waldau and Iain Glen), Prince Nasir Al-Subaii in Syriana (2005) and Hermes in Clash of the Titans (2010, below, along with Rory McCaan).
Most sci-fi/fantasy buffs immediately recognize Siddig from his six-year stint as Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (below, 1993-1999) but he’s collected a lot of other TV credits, including The Big Battalions (1992), 24 (2007), Merlin (2008), Atlantis (2013), Da Vinci’s Demon’s (2013-2015) and Peaky Blinders (2016).
While promoting his 2009 project, Cairo Time, Siddig told Collider how he felt sci-fi (and, we would argue, fantasy) can tackle difficult social and cultural questions easier than smaller, contemporary stories:
"You can do really dark, full-on stuff and take it so far away, to a spaceship somewhere miles and miles (away) on a funny little planet where the creatures are barely recognizable. That and the fact that they work with massive archetypes that we can’t really work with. Only Batman movies can work with those. The characters in Cairo Time, they’re not massive archetypes. They’re normal people."
If you need a little more Siddig in you life, watch for him to pop up in Submergence and the TV miniseries The Kennedys After Camelot in 2017.