Top 10 most perfectly cast actors on Game of Thrones

6. Conleth Hill (Varys)

Seeing actor Conleth Hill out of costume may cause many Game of Thrones fans to do a double take. With a head full of hair and sometimes even a beard, he looks very different from the minimalist Master of Whispers, Lord Varys.

But he always transforms onscreen. Varys is a slippery and demanding role to take on. It takes a deft touch to plays a character who knows this much, more than he can ever say to any one person, and is constantly using it to play different sides against each other. Hill pulls it off. His line readings are never rushed, and he walks with the self-assured pace of someone who sees all and knows all. With a tiny cock of the eyebrow, he lets us know there’s something brewing under the surface, but what?

Before signing on to Thrones, Hill appeared in plenty of films, television shows and video games. He’s also received two Tony nominations for his work on the stage.

And beyond all of that, Hill has an endorsement from George R.R. Martin himself, who wrote on his Not a Blog that he thinks Hill would be a good fit for the lead role in an adaptation of another one of his novels, Tuf Voyaging.