Sandor Clegane

Known to everyone as the Hound, Sandor Clegane is a scarred, hulking bodyguard to the Lannisters, contemptuous of knighthood and the pieties that surround it. He serves Joffrey with visible distaste, drinks hard, and speaks in blunt, ugly truths. Fire terrifies him; little else seems to.

The show hands him a simple trick—brutal killer who hates violence's romance—and McCann plays it without a shred of sentimentality, all gravel voice and dead-eyed menace cut through with sudden, unexpected decency. His scenes with Sansa and Arya reveal a moral core he'd never admit to, which is exactly what makes it land.