Daniel Henshall can make an unsmiling man at the end of a bar difficult to stop watching. We rate his patient, unsettling work, though the threatening parts should not become the only measure of what he can do.
Fi1m perspective
In The Royal Hotel (2023), Daniel Henshall’s Dolly sits at the end of the bar and does not smile. Kitty Green lets the regulars arrive one by one, inviting us to decide which man presents a danger. We felt uneasy watching Dolly because Henshall’s stillness gives us so little reassurance. He does not have to announce himself to remain someone we keep checking.
The early risk was being remembered only for danger. His breakthrough lead as John Bunting in Snowtown (2011) brought an association with dark roles that shaped his initial casting. He subsequently took supporting parts including Robbie in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), before Okja (2017) began his collaboration with Bong Joon-ho. That partnership continued with Preston in Mickey 17 (2025), a funny, kind and overstuffed film whose chief attraction is Robert Pattinson’s double performance. The supporting work matters, even when the film’s main pleasures lie elsewhere.
Green gives him a particularly effective setting. Michael Latham shoots the pub in brown half-light, while Leah Popple supplies the cracked tiles and stickers on the fridge. Henshall’s unsmiling presence belongs in this ordinary room, which makes the unease harder to dismiss. Green keeps us uncertain about our assessment of the regulars rather than letting one actor settle the question for us. The Royal Hotel loses its nerve after its tightly controlled first hour, but Henshall’s contribution to that early tension is a reason to stay.
His threatening men remain recognisably human, a strength already evident in Snowtown. The risk is that casting him for menace becomes sufficient in itself, leaving little else for him to do and denying us the vulnerability that can make his work interesting. Start with The Royal Hotel, but we would welcome more opportunities for Henshall to put us at ease.
Biography
Daniel Henshall is an Australian actor. He was born on 9 August 1982 in Sydney and graduated from the full-time acting programme at Actors Centre Australia in 2006.
Henshall made his feature film debut as John Bunting in Snowtown (2011), winning the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He has since appeared in The Babadook (2014) as Robbie, Okja (2017) as Blond, The Royal Hotel (2023) as Dolly and Mickey 17 (2025) as Preston. On television he played Caleb Brewster across four seasons of Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–2017).
