We hope you’ve got some tissues useful, as a result of TVLine is celebrating essentially the most tear-proficient actors and actresses on the small display screen.
It’s a performer’s job to emote and make viewers really feel their character’s heartache, however some stars simply excel at unleashing the waterworks in methods which are heart-wrenching (excessive sobbing) or impressively executed (see: Jensen Ackles’ marvelous Single Good Man Tear).
Our roundup of TV’s Finest Criers consists of all-stars like Claire Danes, who’s been wowing us together with her trademark chin quiver for 3 a long time, and Jane the Virgin‘s emotional MVP Gina Rodriguez. And naturally, this listing wouldn’t be full with out Mae Whitman and Sterling Okay. Brown, each of whom have been required to do loads of crying on the tearjerker collection Parenthood and This Is Us, respectively.
Plus, we’re basking within the waterworks of One Tree Hill‘s Sophia Bush, Buffy and How I Met Your Mom alumna Alyson Hannigan, Breaking Unhealthy‘s meme-worthy Aaron Paul and a number of Gray’s Anatomy vets.
All in all, the 26 performers highlighted under do their fair proportion to maintain Kleenex in enterprise.
Evaluation our picks for TV’s Finest Criers, then hit the feedback to tell us who you assume shines relating to delivering the tears.
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Aaron Paul
Picture Credit score: AMC screenshot His anguished weeping by the hands of Walter White on Breaking Unhealthy (“He can’t maintain getting away with it!”) was so iconic, it grew to become a meme. (C’mon, you’ve seen it.) Paul has a definite knack for channeling the pent-up feelings of offended younger males, most notably as Breaking Unhealthy‘s recovering junkie Jesse Pinkman, his eyes turning pink and veins coming out of his brow because the waterworks stream. He’s since carried that talent for sobbing with him to The Path and Westworld. Fortunate for us, he can maintain getting away with it.
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Alona Tal
Picture Credit score: Paramount+ screenshot On paper, all the things that occurred to SEAL Crew‘s Clay in Season 6 was tragic. And worthy of tears. However Alona Tal’s capacity to depict Stella’s misery upon studying of Clay’s near-death and leg amputation, after which later drum up the indescribable anguish of a brand new mother who has been so randomly widowed, delivered the season’s hardest-hitting intestine punches.
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Alyson Hannigan
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of twentieth Century Fox Tv When Hannigan activates the waterworks, you may assure your coronary heart can be shattered to items. Look no additional than Buffy‘s Season 4 episode “Wild at Coronary heart” (aka, the one the place Ouncesleft Sunnydale, completely devastating poor Willow within the course of) for proof of that. The actress’ crying prowess was additionally on full show in How I Met Your Mom, when Lily needed to break the information to Marshall that his dad had died. Completely gut-wrenching.
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Andrew Lincoln
Picture Credit score: AMC screenshot Over the course of his nine-season run on AMC’s apocalyptic drama The Strolling Lifeless, the English actor bought to carry out an entire Whitman’s Sampler of crying methods. However his specialty is the full-body, wracking-sobs technique. Actually, he deployed it so wholeheartedly when Rick Grimes discovered that spouse Lori had died after giving beginning to child Judith in Season 3, there was nothing to do on the finish of the scene however collapse on the bottom.
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Candice Patton & Grant Gustin
Picture Credit score: The CW screenshot This one was a coin-flip, seeing as The Flash‘s Iris has been given so many causes to sob over 9 seasons, whereas Barry wears his coronary heart on his sleeve like no different TV superhero. The actual fact is that when the second requires it, both of the present’s main actors might be the quickest tear-producers alive.
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Chyler Leigh
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Hallmark Channel The Supergirl and Gray’s Anatomy vet did quite a lot of spectacular crying on the aforementioned dramas as her alteregos, Alex and Lexi, confronted all the things from an emotional popping out to her personal heartbreaking dying (R.I.P., Lexi). So you’d assume that possibly Leigh was all cried out, however no, the actress reminded us of simply how good she is at letting her character’s emotions stream by way of her tears on Hallmark Channel’s latest collection The Manner Residence.
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Claire Danes
Picture Credit score: Showtime screenshot If there have been a royal court docket of TV criers, Danes would certainly reign supreme because the undisputed queen. From the teenager angst of My So-Known as Life by way of the torturous spy video games of Homeland and only recently as an unhappily divorced mother on Fleishman Is in Bother, the Emmy winner has perfected the artwork of crying on display screen over the previous three a long time, her chin quivering earlier than her entire face crumples right into a spectacularly soggy mess. It’s to the purpose the place we totally count on her characters to cry, however on the identical time, it by no means feels compelled… as a result of she’s so rattling good at it.
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Danielle Brooks
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Netflix Over the course of Orange Is the New Black‘s seven-season run, Brooks’ Taystee developed from comedic sidekick to emotional linchpin. We’ll by no means shake the sight of Taystee wailing as soon as she realized Poussey’s life had been lower brief by an untrained correctional officer utilizing extreme power. Heck, we are able to hear this image. It required massive tears, and Brooks delivered.
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Elisabeth Moss
Picture Credit score: Hulu screenshot There’s loads to weep about within the dystopian, misogynistic world of The Handmaid’s Story, which is probably going why Moss’ June works so onerous to maintain herself collectively more often than not: As soon as she will get began, how would she ever cease? Certainly, that’s the texture Moss offers the moments wherein June has let down her guard and given in to her ever-present sorrow, anger and concern: a determined try to carry all the things down till it floods out of her in an all-consuming (and really affecting) torrent.
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Elizabeth Olsen
Picture Credit score: Disney+ screenshot A grasp of the quivering backside lip, Olsen is sensational at conveying her characters’ heartache, and her flip because the MCU’s grieving Wanda Maximoff has put that capacity on show repeatedly. The WandaVision scene pictured right here was an particularly devastating one — and when you think about that Olsen was speaking to a dull android head, whereas conjuring imaginary magic together with her fingers, her emotion is much more spectacular.
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Emmy Rossum
Picture Credit score: Showtime screenshot Shameless vet Emmy Rossum earned her spot on this listing as a result of her uncommon crying scenes as feisty Fiona Gallagher at all times felt very actual and uncooked. Let’s face it, nobody actually cries with a single tear working down their cheek like many Hollywood reveals and movies need us to consider. It’s the runny nostril, frog-in-the-throat, blurry eyes, simply straight-out ugly crying that makes any efficiency really feel extra genuine, which Rossum nailed.
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Eva Inexperienced
Picture Credit score: Showtime screenshot It’s a marvel that the actress’ eyes aren’t nonetheless red-rimmed after three seasons of Showtime’s brilliantly bleak interval piece, Penny Dreadful. She wasn’t referred to as upon to cry buckets as embattled Vanessa Ives however entire swimming pools, and she or he did so time and time once more with a degree of dedication that might’ve moved a stone to empathy. Even all these years later, it stays an infuriating thriller how Inexperienced was by no means nominated for an Emmy.
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Freddie Highmore
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of ABC It’s no shock that the Good Physician star is a three-time TVLine Performer of the Week. And every efficiency we singled out concerned tears. Angry tears! Boohoo tears! Deeply overwhelmed tears! And he’s nearly as good at giving pet canine eyes as he’s at contorting his face and providing you with a very ugly cry. Problem Dr. Murphy’s {qualifications} as a surgeon and watch. him. go.
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Gina Rodriguez
Picture Credit score: Netflix screenshot As a telenovela, Jane the Virgin undoubtedly required a variety of its star when it got here to the emotional spectrum, and Rodriguez at all times delivered. But it surely was when the actress let the waterworks fly that Rodriguez actually shined, like when Jane’s entire physique virtually shook with sobs upon studying that her husband Michael had died.
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Hayden Panettiere
Picture Credit score: ABC screenshot Rising up on a cleaning soap opera like Guiding Mild was good tear-duct coaching for a younger Panettiere, whose capacity to crumple right into a soggy, upset mess is as spectacular as it’s affecting. Exhibit A: Her work as Nashville‘s troubled Juliette, whose dangerous choices and impulsive actions (coat-closet intercourse with the sleazy Jeff Fordham, anybody?) usually led to her making tearful pleas for forgiveness — just like the one above, which Jonathan Jackson’s Avery promptly rejected, resulting in even higher waterworks.
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Jensen Ackles
Picture Credit score: The CW screenshot The actor’s capacity to unleash an ideal tear on Supernatural was so legendary that the collection crafted a complete unique track round it, titled “A Single Man Tear,” for its musical two hundredth episode. And the present actually gave Ackles’ Dean loads to cry about: Whether or not speaking about his time in literal Hell or witnessing his brother Sammy must sacrifice somebody he cares about, watching Ackles break down was at all times gut-wrenching.
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Justin Theroux
Picture Credit score: HBO screenshot Numerous issues that occurred in HBO’s chic supernatural drama The Leftovers required us to droop our disbelief; its main man’s crying jags have been none of them. As beleaguered Kevin Garvey, Theroux appeared to sob from the within out, grounding the often-mystifying goings-on in feelings that didn’t simply really feel actual however painfully actual.
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Katherine Kelly Lang
Picture Credit score: CBS screenshot One in every of The Daring and the Stunning‘s two remaining OGs, Brooke Logan’s portrayer stands head and tear ducts above daytime’s many, many weeping wonders not simply because she’s sobbed a lot — “Cry me a river” isn’t merely a saying to her, it’s a viable suggestion — however as a result of she’s accomplished so so spectacularly nicely. Are you able to title one other actor who can cry on cue out of only one eye — both eye? Didn’t assume so.
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Liza Weil
Picture Credit score: Netflix screenshot For some actors, it’s a full-body effort to squeeze out only one tear. Not for Weil! The Gilmore Ladies alum can go from zero to red-eyed, stuffy-nosed sobbing in seconds — a talent that served her nicely not solely in key Gilmore scenes, however all through her six seasons as The way to Get Away With Homicide‘s deeply traumatized Bonnie Winterbottom.
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Mae Whitman
Picture Credit score: Hulu screenshot Given the quantity of waterworks on NBC’s Parenthood, we have now to imagine “easy crier” was a part of the casting requirement. It actually describes Whitman, who doesn’t simply convey the tears in her emotional scenes, however delivers her dialogue with an genuine tremor in her voice. Living proof: Season 5, Episode 10 of Parenthood, simply earlier than Ryan reveals to Amber that he’s re-enlisted within the army. Breaks us each time!
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Melody Thomas Scott
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of CBS Any daytime actor can cry, proper? However far rarer are those who could make watching them weep a visceral expertise for the viewers. Scott, The Younger and the Stressed‘ longest-serving solid member, is amongst that uncommon breed. When she opens the floodgates as stripper-turned-society dame Nikki Newman, we are able to nearly really feel the bitter sting of her tears.
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Ruth Wilson
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Showtime One needn’t look any additional than The Affair‘s penultimate Season 1 episode to see why Wilson deserves a spot on this listing — particularly, when Allison visits the household physician and sobs over the likelihood that she might’ve accomplished extra to stop the secondary drowning that killed her 4-year-old son Gabriel. Her trauma was so convincing we thought she was going to go out and fall immediately right into a puddle of tears on the ground.
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Sarah Drew
Picture Credit score: ABC screenshot Scrubbing on for almost a decade on ABC’s long-running Gray’s Anatomy gave the much-missed alum a gazillion possibilities to activate the waterworks as April Kepner (usually accompanied by a rant that was as bitter because the tears). However her tour de power got here in Season 11, when the physician and then-husband Jackson Avery tried to wrap their heads across the grim destiny that awaited their unborn son.
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Sophia Bush
Picture Credit score: Hulu screenshot Regardless of her plain comedic flare, Bush is in the beginning a drama queen, and the 9 seasons she spent as One Tree Hill‘s Brooke Davis gave her loads to cry about. Who might overlook the look of devastation on her face when Lucas first cheated on her? Or when she pleaded with him to open up at Nathan and Haley’s wedding ceremony? Or when she advised Julian she couldn’t have kids? You get the thought. One Tree Hill put this poor girl by way of the wringer, however she and her superhuman tear ducts have been at all times as much as the problem.
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Sterling Okay. Brown
Picture Credit score: NBC screenshot Present us a higher grasp of man tears — we’ll wait. However you may’t, as a result of the This Is Us star can do all of it. Stoic, quiet crying as an emotion slowly ups its depth? Full-out, code red-level sobbing that accompanies a life-altering breakdown? The rueful wiping of the eyes as a second with the youngsters will get a little bit too misty? Over the course of six seasons on the NBC household drama, Brown proved the Kleenex king.
