Pryce plays Pope Francis—a liberal humanist from Argentina—alongside Anthony Hopkins as his conservative predecessor Pope Benedict. After Pryce’s feature film debut in Voyage of the Damned (1976), his career soared with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Christopher Hampton’s Carrington (for which he won the 1995 Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor Prize), last year’s The Wife as the Nobel Prize-winning husband of Glenn Close, and Game of Thrones, playing High Sparrow.

His theater credits are equally impressive: Pryce starred in Comedians in London and on Broadway, for which he received a Tony; the original West End as well as Broadway productions of Miss Saigon—earning both the Olivier and Tony Awards; West End’s Oliver and My Fair Lady, as well as The Merchant of Venice, and King Lear.

The Two Popes is directed by Fernando Meirelles, best known for The Constant Gardener and City of God. The screenplay of this Netflix release is by Anthony McCarten, who received Oscar nominations for The Theory of Everything, The Darkest Hour, and Bohemian Rhapsody. A.O. Scott’s review in The New York Timespraised the film’s “two-man study of friendship, rivalry and major British acting,” calling it “absolutely riveting, a subtle and engaging double portrait that touches on complicated matters of faith, ambition and moral responsibility.”