Henry Golding

In Crazy Rich Asians (2018) Nick Young stands at the edge of rooms full of people who disapprove of his girlfriend, and Golding's whole performance is a kind of apology. He looks sorry well. In The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024), six years and a good many films later, Freddy Alvarez blows something up and grins about it. Between those two expressions there is a great deal of pleasantness and not much else, and we are still not sure whether that is his doing or his directors'.

Golding came to acting late and sideways. He spent about a decade as a television presenter, for ESPN, the BBC and Discovery Channel Asia, and had no acting training when Jon M. Chu cast him as the heir to one of the richest families in Asia. It shows, and not only as a fault. A presenter's job is to be liked at once and to keep out of the way of the subject, and that is what Nick is asked to be: the still point while Constance Wu and Michelle Yeoh do the fighting. He was then hired fast, for A Simple Favor (2018), for The Gentlemen (2019) as Dry Eye, for Snake Eyes (2021) as an action lead, by people who wanted the face before anyone knew what it could do.

Paul Feig has used him three times and Guy Ritchie twice, which tells you he is agreeable on a set and reliable in an ensemble. It also tells you the parts he gets: the polished man with the English accent, the one you would not mind having at dinner. Ritchie's Ministry puts him beside Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson and hands Ritchson the one real invention; Golding makes up the numbers with good grace and is not asked for more. We came out of Crazy Rich Asians liking him and unable to name a single thing he had done, which is a strange thing to say of the male lead in a romantic comedy, and it is because Chu has him receive every scene rather than start one.

The film we have not reviewed and would most like to is Monsoon (2019), the independent drama in which he plays Kit, a man returning to Southeast Asia, built from the mixed heritage Golding has spoken about plainly: "I was always confused about who I was and what culture I represented. I was never Asian enough. I was never English enough." That is the part that asks him to do something with the stillness rather than simply wear it, and it is where we would look first to find out whether there is an actor under the presenter. Until then the verdict is provisional. He is easy to watch and hard to remember. The next director who gives him something to want will find out whether that can change.