Critic’s Notebook: Actress Ann Dowd is a revelation away from the ensemble pack

Every year, the forces of the universe align and some wonderful character actor who has spent years honing his or her craft in small roles gets to step out of the ensemble and shine, shine, shine.

This year’s midcareer supernova was Ann Dowd. Previously best known for her work in the film “Compliance,” Dowd put in hypnotic and astonishingly diverse performances in four big TV dramas: “The Leftovers,” “Masters of Sex,” “True Detective” and “The Divide.”

Playing mother to Michael Sheen’s William Masters on the Showtime series, she was a quietly radiant mix of judgment and regret. Briefly appearing as the abused, damaged and incestuous sister of “True Detective’s” serial killer on HBO, she was grimy, pathetic and seriously disturbing. As the mother of a death-row convict in “The Divide” on WE tv, she was Boston-Irish charming and sociopath chilling.

But it was in “The Leftovers” that she blew up the joint. Consistently stealing the show from her better known costars (including Amy Brenneman, and that’s hard to do), Dowd both lifted and anchored an intentionally and often maddeningly opaque narrative. More important, she reminded the world that some of our finest actors were the ones standing stage left to the star.

And she did it almost entirely without the benefit of dialogue.

“The Leftovers,” which concluded its first season Sunday on HBO and is based on the book by Tom Perrotta, chronicles life in a small Northern town years after 2% of the population has mysteriously vanished. Having missed out on what many consider the rapture, those left behind struggle to make sense of it all.

Some of the more traumatized have formed a group called the Guilty Remnant. Clad in white, sworn to silence, smoking and surveillance, they travel through the town in pairs, watching with silent disdain any attempt to live a normal life.

As the season progressed, the group became more provocative and increasingly divisive; a major thread involved Brenneman’s Laurie Garvey, who joined the GR to the horror of her husband, Kevin (Justin Theroux), the chief of police.

Patti was the local GR leader and Laurie’s mentor, and with her bright blue eyes and mournful mien, Dowd was able to evoke the impossible: zealous, charismatic detachment.

The growing popularity of slower-paced dramas on television has given rise to a whole new form of acting: roiling stillness. Increasingly, our flat-screens are filled with faces that manage to convey huge and often violent emotions with very little movement. Julianna Margulies in “The Good Wife,” Damian Lewis in “Homeland,” Jon Hamm in “Mad Men,” Aden Young in “Rectify,” Michael Kitchen in “Foyle’s War.”

Where others might choose more physically expressive performances, these actors find power in stillness. The universe in a glance, the big reveal in a single gesture.

Like them, Dowd did more with silence than most performers could have done with a Shakespearean monologue. In scenes in which Patti did little more than scribble a few words on a pad, Dowd made her a study in contradiction, wise and insane, loving and ruthless, tranquil and furious, and utterly distraught.

When she was in frame, you could not look away.

Which was good for the show, since Patti was, intentionally or not, the make-or-break role. The series contemplates the fragile nature of reality; tweak it just enough and the whole concept unravels.

In the universe according to Perrotta and co-creator Damon Lindelof, some go into survival mode, patching things up or quickly knitting together a new mythology, while others, like Patti, surrender utterly to the revelation of nothingness.

In a show that celebrated the fine line between subtle and extreme, Patti was both; to enjoy “The Leftovers,” you had to believe in her, and Dowd made that exquisitely easy.

So it was quite a shock when (spoiler alert) Patti died in Episode 8. Dowd has been compared by many to Margo Martindale, another wonderful character actor who lifts all boats around her. Watching Patti die, it was hard not to think, with strangely fresh bitterness, of Martindale’s Mags Bennett on “Justified,” who was a Patti-like revelation and also condemned to death.

“Justified” never again hit the bar the Mags season set, and though Patti’s death scene was very good and quite important to Theroux’s character, “The Leftovers” sacrificed its queen to make the play.

On the bright side, Dowd is now free to be showered with starring roles, and about damn time.

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