First one that comes to mind is Juliet Stevenson. She’s not well known to American moviegoers, but in Truly, Madly, Deeply, a movie which is inexplicably not available on DVD in the US, she gives just about the most heart-wrenching performance you’ve ever not seen.
My favorite underrated actor of the male persuasion is someone most people know by face if not by name. I first noticed JK Simmons on the prison show Oz, and remember thinking to myself, “this guy is too believable as a neo-nazi prison gang boss, I will never be able to see him as anything else.” See how aggressively he proved me wrong in Spider-Man, Juno, The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading, etc.


