There are people whose baby photos make you exclaim, “Wow, you have the same face!” But some of us have shifted so far away from the original composition that it’s a little startling to see. I was thinking about this while staring at British actor Andrew Lincoln, whose face has undergone such a journey, and by whom I am still entranced.

Like most Brits of a certain generation, I first saw Lincoln, now 43, in the seminal 1990s drama This Life. As reluctant lawyer and sort-of-slacker Egg, with that earnest, wide-open face, Lincoln drew me in, even though I knew I was too young to be watching the show. By the time he was in Teachers (playing a slacker newbie teacher), his face had shifted to match the character: cocky and funny, a little stupid – and completely charming. But it was in 2010, when he took on the long-running role of Rick Grimes in the long-running post-zombie-apocalypse television series The Walking Dead, that I saw his face morph into its most arresting configuration yet.

Over six seasons, Lincoln has imbued even the smallest physical movements with precise meaning: with no more than a squint of his eyes, he can be haunted, crazed, inscrutable or devastated.

In the new seventh season, Lincoln’s grizzled face is leaner than it once was, lending him an air of gravitas. I never expected such hidden depths. A plot development leaves his character crushed, revealing hidden depths: a scene where he is nearly forced to chop off his son’s arm is particularly devastating, and makes his lack of an Emmy nomination bewildering.