10 Greatest Actors Alive (And Currently Working)

10. Jack O'Connell

Jack O’Connell has come a long way since Skins, a show he was routinely the only thing worth watching for. A volatile presence, he combines his natural, working-class, jack-the-lad Englishness with something more approaching star quality—as made evident by Angelina Jolie’s casting of him in her failed war-time epic, Unbroken.

As Louis Zamperini, O’Connell showed his movie-star potential, but his true nature lies in smaller, darker, ultimately more unsettling fare. He was magnetic in ’71, one of last year’s most underrated films, and he was a true phenomenon in Starred Up, a performance which looks set to define him. Those films showed O’Connell in all his combustible energy, and, at only 24, there should be plenty more to come from an actor who provides a welcome respite from the WASP-ish talents of British cohorts like Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch.

See Him In: The Runaway: a TV mini-series based on the Martina Cole novel of the same name.