Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Spent three seasons on Saturday Night Live before landing the role of Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, a part built around a physical comic instinct — the arm-shove, the dead-fish handshake — that turned a sitcom about nothing into appointment television for a decade. She later starred as Vice President and then President Selina Meyer on Veep, winning six consecutive Emmy Awards for the role and becoming, across her career, the most Emmy-decorated performer in television history.