Claes Bang

John Paul Williams calls his wife "Mammy" in front of company. He does not raise his voice in Bad Sisters (2022); he explains, kindly, why each of her sisters is wrong, and then makes sure of it. That is Claes Bang's trade: a tall, well-dressed man whose reasonableness is the weapon. He has the build for a bully, six foot four and more, and almost never uses it. The damage is done at conversational pitch.

He came to English-language screens late. He trained at the Danish National School of Theatre, graduating in 1996, and spent two decades in Danish theatre and television, including a monologue he performed more than 300 times. Then Ruben Östlund cast him, at 50, as Christian, the self-absorbed art curator in The Square (2017), and the international roles followed. Dracula (2020) let him do the charm with fangs; The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020) put him in another art world with worse intentions; Robert Eggers gave him Fjölnir in The Northman (2022). He has said of playing bad men: "I always try to find something in there that I can use. Because otherwise I can't really make it real."

What he finds is usually a small insecurity, and it is what keeps his monsters out of cartoon. Some critics thought JP one; we did not. We were frightened of him inside two scenes, and what did it was not a threat but the way Anne-Marie Duff's Grace laughs a beat after he does, having checked his face first. Bang never winks and never asks the audience for help, and the man is all the worse for being, in his own house, never once wrong.

The limit shows when the certainty has nothing behind it. In Durga Chew-Bose's Bonjour Tristesse (2025) he plays Raymond, a widower who treats his whole life as a holiday, and he gives him charm without weight. That is right for the man, but the film needs us to believe he might change for Chloë Sevigny's Anne, and we never did, so his daughter's jealousy has nothing to feed on. William Tell (2025) asked him to be a folk hero with a crossbow, and the reviews so far suggest the refinement that makes his villains work sits oddly on a man of action. He is better at the one who talks his way out than the one who fights his way out.

Start with Bad Sisters, which is also the one to show anyone who thinks a tall Dane in a good coat is easy casting. The next director to hire him should write a scene in which he is finally, visibly wrong, and see what he does with it. We suspect it would be the best thing he has done.