The top 15 best performances on Game of Thrones

Image: Game of Thrones/HBO

13. Aidan Gillen as Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger)

Game of Thrones is full of these smaller characters who specialize in pulling the strings behind closed doors. They have the ears of powerful people, which they try to use for their own ends. Of all these characters, none has ambitions as grand as Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish. He’s a man who does not come from royalty but is aiming for nothing less than the Iron Throne itself. That kind of ambition is very dangerous.

Aidan Gillen does incredible work bringing to life the best manipulator in Westeros. His sneaky demeanor and slimy smile come through in every moment that he’s on screen, making audiences squirm with unease.

Gillen is great at pretending to be sweet while holding a dagger behind his back. But what puts him on this list is how he shows us the human being behind the smarm. Gillen’s Littlefinger understands that the only way to get what you want in this world is to create disorder and then take advantage of the resulting chaos to advance your agenda. But his love for Cat and Sansa, compromised as it is, brings him back down to earth.

My favorite moment of his in the series is his last. For the first time, we see this man bested, and the result is pathetic. He’s crying and begging for his life, and we see that all this time, underneath his ingratiating facade there was a scared little boy who thought he could get away with playing with the lives of others. When Littlefinger loses, Gillen makes it feel bittersweet in spite of everything. He is not a character we ever root for and never one we trust, yet Gillen’s performance at least makes him a character we can understand and even somewhat respect.