Bob Gunton

Bob Gunton's Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) seems entirely comfortable having power over other people. Gunton gives him the conviction of a man who takes his own authority for granted, and that makes him a persuasive obstacle to the film's faith in decency. We found Norton unsettling because Gunton makes his severity seem so ordinary to him. There is little sense that the character would recognise himself in our description. It is the performance we would start with, and an example of why casting him as another stern official can feel too easy.

Frank Darabont's film earns its warmth through the friendship played by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and our recommendation comes with reservations about how insistently it teaches its moral lessons. Gunton helps make those moral divisions easy to read: we do not spend much time wondering what to think of this warden. The performance has conviction, but the film sometimes makes prison life too tidy. That is a reservation about Darabont's film, not a reason to soften the warden.

His stage work suggests how much that familiar screen job leaves unused. He originated Juan Perón in the Broadway Evita (1979), then played the title role in the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1989). Those are substantial musical roles, a useful corrective to the habit of thinking of him only as the stern man in charge. From the early 1990s, film and television took greater prominence, with authority figures and antagonists recurring.

His Ethan Kanin in 24 and Cyrus Vance in Argo (2012) belong to that continuing run of institutional figures. The usefulness is clear: Gunton makes seniority credible, and a supporting actor who can do that saves a film considerable explanation. The risk is that credibility becomes all he is asked to supply. We would welcome more casting that remembers the musical actor, rather than simply finding another office for the warden.