Martin Sheen

Martin Sheen plays President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing. Bartlet needs enough authority to change the atmosphere simply by entering a room, but he also needs to be believable when irritating his staff with a piece of trivia. Sheen handles both without making them seem like separate versions of the character.

His relationship with John Spencer's Leo McGarry is one of the foundations of the series. The two can suggest a long friendship through a correction, a look or the point at which Leo decides to interrupt. Sheen's speeches attract attention, understandably; the listening is just as useful.

Long before Bartlet, Sheen starred in Terrence Malick's Badlands and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. His career also includes The Subject Was Roses, Wall Street, The Departed and The Way. He later played Robert Hanson in the comedy Grace and Frankie.

That career gives him plenty of different registers, but The West Wing makes particularly good use of the warmth. Bartlet can be vain and impatient without becoming a man whose company you want to escape. Sheen makes it easy to understand why the staff are still arguing on his behalf late into the evening.