Forest Whitaker | Shawn Ryan | Detective | Jon Kavanaugh

Until now, no one has rivaled the physical presence of Mackey, but that may change with the addition of Forest Whitaker (Platoon, The Crying Game) to the cast as Detective Jon Kavanaugh. Whitaker is an actor who manages to loom large while maintaining a quiet gravity. Then again, quiet may not be on the table for a show like The Shield. "We do a lot of nasty head-butting, the two of us," Chiklis says of his and Whitaker's characters. He won't reveal much about the season, but he does offer this: "Some things come full circle, and it deals with conscience. We have a tagline for every season. This year the tagline is 'conscience is a killer,' and it has to do with my character's odyssey. The original sin of the show, so to speak, is coming back to haunt me."

In the past year, writer/executive producer Shawn Ryan has hinted that the show may be coming to a close, but Chiklis isn't so sure. "One of our collective fears is that we'll let this show fade or become long in the tooth," he says. "We were talking about [ending the show] a lot before this season, but we came into this season, and it feels as fresh as season one. Maybe even better, because we're a well-oiled machine now. We know how to do it."

In the meantime, Chiklis is making forays into film. Last year, in order to play the Thing in Fantastic Four, he donned a costume so cumbersome it actually sent him into therapy - it was that traumatic. "Seeing my daughters' faces made it worth it, though," he says. Chiklis has two daughters, Autumn and Odessa, and he was glad they could finally see him in something made for their demographic. (Autumn plays Chiklis's daughter on The Shield, but he has been adamant about not letting her watch certain violent scenes.) This summer, he braves the massive costume again to shoot the sequel, due to open in the summer of 2007.