Naveen Andrews

Andrews' heritage — he was born in London to Indian immigrant parents — has made him suitable for characters with all kinds of backgrounds, including Sayid, the former Iraqi Republican Guard torturer he plays on Lost. ''Recently, I've started thinking that most white people would give their left leg to play some of the complex, tortured parts I've gotten to play,'' he told EW. Those parts have included a Pakistani Londoner who starts a country band in Wild West (1992) and a 16th-century Indian prince in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996). But his best-known pre-Lost role was Kip, the Sikh lieutenant and bomb-defusing expert who falls for nurse Juliette Binoche (shown) at the tail end of World War II in The English Patient. These days, handling explosives, fixing radios and computers, and interrogating prisoners is all in a day's work for Andrews.