Polly Gray

Polly Gray runs the Shelby family's finances and keeps its secrets while the men are off scheming and fighting. Sharp-eyed, superstitious, and utterly unsentimental about danger, she reads tarot cards and ledgers with the same cool authority. She raised these boys and she is not afraid of a single one of them.

Helen McCrory gives Polly a stillness that makes every other actor look busy by comparison — she can silence a room of gangsters with a raised eyebrow. The writing trusts her to be the family's conscience and its coldest strategist at once, and McCrory never lets those two things soften each other.