With a face like a serrated blade and a pair of fierce, beady eyes, it's not hard to see why Sean Harris has often been cast as villains of various stripes – in the last couple of Mission: Impossible films, for instance, as well as on TV shows such as Southcliffe and The Borgias.
In Thomas M. Wright's The Stranger – the second film by the Australian actor-turned-director following his auspicious 2018 debut, Acute Misfortune – Harris appears so gaunt as to seem ghoulish, his hard-bitten features made more prominent by the fact of his long, greasy grey locks being pulled back into a ponytail. His countenance slides between slack-jawed and alert, suspicious and vulnerable, with an unnerving unpredictability; his voice a lean rasp.
He's leaned in so hard that viewers may recoil – if they can take their eyes away, that is.
