Timothy Spall

Talk about suffering for your art. Achieving his acclaimed performance as the masterful British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner in “Mr. Turner” took so much out of Timothy Spall, the veteran actor found himself kneeling down at the artist’s tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral when it was all over—and crying.

Some of J.M.W. Turner’s most famous subjects include Hannibal traversing the Alps and a study of sea monsters (or perhaps just fish, as the Tate prosaically insists), but he is best known for the maritime scenes that are now considered an early bridge to Impressionism.