20 Most Underrated Actors Working Today

17. Maura Tierney

Despite gaining some well-earned recognition for the drama series The Affair, where she starred as an embattled wife in a marriage that ranged from loveless to impossibly passionate, Maura Tierney has always fell just outside the mainstream. 

And that's crazy when you consider her work: Primal Fear, Insomnia, Beautiful Boy, Twisters, The Iron Claw. She's done them all and then, bringing heartbreak and emotional turmoil to women caught in the midst of tragedy - or at least the aftermath of it - but pushing through, knowing there's something brighter on the horizon. 

Take The Iron Claw, a film that features career-best work from Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Holt McCallany, where she stars as McCallany's loyal but smothered wife, a woman who has to hold herself together in the face of insurmountable loss and a marriage that feels as suffocating as it does full of genuine feeling. 

Never showy, Tierney is a heartbreaker, a force of real humanity who finds hope even in the most broken of characters. And don't forget Liar Liar - for all the tears, Tierney is great at comedy!