Game Of Thrones: 10 Criminally Overlooked Performances
8. Noah Taylor As Locke
One of the few characters created purely for the series, Locke has a fairly limited role in season 3 his role is to show up, capture Jamie and Brienne, subsequently menace them for several episodes, cut Jamie's hand off, then fade into the background. So it's easy to miss the lowbrow but nonetheless tactile menace that Noah Taylor brings to this role. Taylor captures a unique mix of tropes for this character both a not exceptionally bright soldier (who thinks he's smarter than he is) and an extreme sadist, Locke is the type of villain hardly uncommon in Game of Thrones; threatening, but also crude and dim-witted, he's like a more pathetic version of The Hound. Noah Taylor relishes the crude sadistic humiliations he subjects Jamie and Brienne to, and his darkly comic timing adds an additionally sinister edge to the proceedings. Why is this Performance Overlooked? This is the Joffrey Baratheon effect on a much more minor scale because the character is so hatable, the actor isn't heaped with any significant praise. Also, this role walks the weirdly thin line between minor and supporting role in Jamie and Brienne's storyline, making him easy to overlook.
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