STERLING CHARACTER

“Washington Black,” on Hulu.

- BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM

There’s a certain face that only Sterling K. Brown can make. It is yoked to no particular emotional state, and emerges just as often when the actor is conveying deep glee or charming irony as when his character is lost in sorrow. Brown's jaw gently churns, his eyes go glassy, and the muscles around his mouth slacken a bit. He’s lost in a reverie of intensity, absorbing life’s shocks and cruelties or its absurd beauties, processing it all by opening some spirit portal via his face. He’s not necessarily about to cry, but the look is an assertion that high emotion is almost always an appropriate response to life’s fluctuations.

Brown's most memorable characters—Randall Pearson, the principled father and adopted son from NBC’s tear-jerking drama “This Is Us”; the grieving Secret Service officer Xavier Collins, on the recent eco-dystopian thriller “Paradise”—are strong guys with vulnerable cores. They exist at an elevated altitude of emotion and lead plot-heavy lives whose stakes are written as much in Brown's expressions as in the words that he speaks.