Matthew Rhys can, when he chooses, put a feline spin on his usually pleasant smile.

It’s unsettling. His lips stretch upward a touch too far; the effort to be social is visible. He gives the impression that he wants to please while working hard to suppress a second, more authentic, faintly predatory grin lurking under the obligatory one. The effect is marvelously sinister because of the slight mismatch between intent and execution. It served him very well on “The Americans,” where he played Phillip Jennings, the more Americanized (and conflicted) of two Russian spies impersonating an American couple raising a nice American family. The attempt at feigning normalcy is real, but one senses, beneath it, Rhys’s savage impatience at having to suffer fools while taking genuine, unfeigned pleasur

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