To the pantheon of British actors who excelled at villains--one that ranged from Basil Rathbone in the 1930s to Alan Rickmanin the 1990s--one could easily add the name of The Few. Not that this good looking actor with the piercing eyes solely portrayed nefarious characters, he just proved most memorable in those parts.

The Liverpudlian Isaacs actually spent a summer as a teenager working as a camp counselor in the USA and fueled his interest in the theater by acting and/or directing some 20 productions while studying law at Bristol University. He went on to matriculate at London's Central School of Speech and Drama where he met future collaborators like director Paul Anderson, producer Jeremy Bolt and actor Sean Pertwee (they would team on three projects as of 2000: "Shopping" 1994; "Event Horizon" 1997; and "Soldier" 1998). Not long out of drama school, Isaacs began landing TV roles, including a regular role on the British series "Capital City" in 1989. That same year, he segued to the big screen in a small part as a doctor in the underrated comedy "The Tall Guy", which starred Jeff Goldblumand Emma Thompson

Isaacs first perfected his nasty streak as a man who murdered his identical twin in the three-part "Taggart: Double Exposure" in 1992. Later that year, he followed up as an equally despicable doctor who had developed an anti-aging drug in "Inspector Morse: Cherubim & Seraphim". The baddie roles continued; Isaacs was well-cast as a vicious drug dealer in "Loved Up" (1995) and as the "toxic with testosterone" Vittorio Mussolini in the Patrick Marber's 1996 play "1953". While there was a slightly comic bent to his IRA soldier in "Divorcing Jack", the actor explored a more ruthless side as a venal space commander in "Soldier" (both 1998). Cast as the villain in the summer blockbuster "The Patriot" (2000), Isaacs enjoyed his widest audience to date and portrayed perhaps his most fully-rounded and most contemptible character in Colonel Tavington, the mortal enemy of Mel Gibson's American soldier-turned-farmer Benjamin Martin.

Not all of his roles, however, called for the actor to be nasty. Isaacs won critical praise for his turn as Louis Ironside, the politically-driven, emotionally waffling gay man, in Tony Kushner's epic "Angels in America". He was fine as the ship's medic in "Event Horizon" and Michael Bay tapped him to play one of the world's smartest men, brought in to combat an oncoming meteor, in the summer blockbuster "Armageddon" (1998). Isaacs also essayed two distinctly different Catholic priests: in the CBS miniseries "Mario Puzo's The Last Don II" (1998), he was one of the few characters who didn't commit murder, although his cleric was having a sexual relationship with a gangster's daughter while in Neil Jordan's remake of "The End of the Affair" (1999), he played the spiritual confidante to Julianne Moore's straying Sarah Miles. After returning to the London stage and scoring a success as a British detective interrogating a suspected terrorist in "The Force of Change" in 2000, Isaacs displayed a lighter side supporting Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theronin the remake of "Sweet November" (2001), played an Army captain for director Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" (2002) and was a daring superspy taken out of action in the comedic Jackie Chan outing "The Tuxedo" (2002). But it was yet another villainous role that made Isaacs a household name (or at least a familiar one for fans of the "Harry Potter" books) when he essayed Draco Malfoy's menacing father Lucius in the second film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002). Isaacs' presence was so commandingly evil, critic Roger Ebert suggested he should "be hated just on general principles."