Chris Noth

Noth's trophy case is thin, and that is worth saying plainly. Two Golden Globe nominations, one SAG ensemble nod, and no major competitive wins on record. What he has instead is something harder to quantify: he helped launch two franchises that ran for years and are still watched. Mike Logan was in the room when Law & Order began in 1990. Mr. Big was the romantic engine of Sex and the City for six seasons and two films. Those are casting decisions that shaped how a generation talked about television.