Anton Yelchin: The Star Trek actor's best performances you may have missed

Though the actor will be remembered most fondly for his role as Star Trek's Chekov, Yelchin leaves behind an incredible career cut short far too soon

Anton Yelchin's passing is one so remorselessly cruel. Dead at age 27; he leaves behind both an incredible career and the awful, lingering loss of everything he was set to achieve.

He was an actor beloved for his work, beloved by those who worked with him; a rising star robbed of the opportunity to climb to his pinnacle due to the machinations of fate. This summer will see the release of Star Trek Beyond, where Yelchin returned to the role he'll forever be most fondly remembered for; the 17-year-old Russian prodigy and navigator of the USS Enterprise.

The rebooted Star Trek movies always played to Yelchin's strengths; his gentleness, his charm remained irresistible. He played Chekov's wide-eyed nerves with boundless energy, yet those eyes could in turn capture a fragility that lent itself so earnestly to sincere drama.

Even in his moments of early promise as a young child actor, he shone; Yelchin was the kind of actor who stamped a mark on every role he played, no matter how minor, yet stayed effortlessly generous in his presence. It's awful to think about what we had yet to see from him, but comforting to remind ourselves how much he had given in his short time with us.

Green Room (2015); dir. Jeremy Saulnier

Yelchin still has several roles yet to hit screens, though his most recent is a perfect reminder of his talent: Jeremy Saulnier's frighteningly thrilling Green Room, pitching a young punk band against a horde of neo-Nazis, led by Darcy Banker (Patrick Stewart).

As an actor, he always seemed at home with this kind of genre film. His looks capturing the boy-next-door vibe, tinged with just a touch of the haunted quality; here well-suited to the role of the band's sullen bassist.

Taken (2002); TV Mini-series

Steven Spielberg's science fiction miniseries Taken, which aired in 2002, proved Yelchin's first real opportunity to shine as an actor; outside his memorable comedic turn as the self-described kid magician, who only knew one card trick, on Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

In Taken, he played the young Jacob Clarke, a cripplingly shy, alien-human hybrid; yet in possession of vast psychic powers and an ethereal precociousness the young actor was perfectly adept at capturing.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013): Jim Jarmusch

Even when sharing the screen with immortal vampires, Yelchin's presence was still utterly enrapturing. In Jim Jarmusch's comedically nihilistic, charmingly morbid Only Lovers Left Alive, the actor played human assistant to Tom Hiddleston's wearied neckbiter Adam.

Loveable in his dog-like loyalty, mixed with an utter obliviousness to Adam's vampiric nature; Yelchin's Ian was also the subject of the film's best punchline, when Adam scolds a churlish, young vampire with, "You drank Ian. You drank Ian."

Charlie Bartlett (2007); dir. Jon Poll

Yelchin may have been headed towards the great league of character actors, but he still had a charm that primed him as leading man; already proven so early in his career, when he took up the role of Charlie Bartlett's titular prodigy.

A wealthy, but rebellious teen, Charlie's string of expulsions land him in public school; where his natural charisma spawns a career in prescription drug dealing and psychotherapy.

Though the film was intended, in many ways, to be one of Robert Downey Jr.'s catalogue of comeback roles - here playing the embittered alcoholic Principal Nathan Gardner - it was Yelchin who soon proved to be the film's true heart.

Odd Thomas (2014); dir. Stephen Sommers

Another example of Yelchin's stellar work in the horror genre, alongside a lead in 2011's Fright Night remake, Odd Thomas served the actor with another chance to fight the supernatural and become the hero of the hour.

His titular character may only be a small-town fry cook, but his ability to see the dead soon pushes him into saviour mode, after evil forces only he can comprehend threaten disaster of apocalyptic proportions. Stephen Sommer's goofy mystery wasn't the best-received film of Yelchin's career, but his enigmatic turn still makes it extremely watchable, and proves he had an innate ability to hoist up everything around him.

Like Crazy (2001); dir. Drake Doremus

It's hard to decipher which will be heralded as the best performance of his career; a combination of being so consistently good, and the tragedy that he was never offered the showy, prestige role that would have made him instantly iconic.

Yet, Yelchin was never quite as raw, or present, as he was in Drake Doremus' Like Crazy. A film which remastered the romantic comedy in its most brutally realistic, tenderly relatable form; with Yelchin and Felicity Jones in that familiar dance of the death of the long-distance relationship, as a British student is taken from her American love after she's banned from the USA for overstaying her visa.