By placing with each other this Leading 10 list of most essential major Hollywood actors of all time I have attempted to be as objective as doable (for instance my personal favored actor is Robert Mitchum, who’s 10th on this list) by applying the following criteria: the significance of their distinct roles, the variety of their oeuvre, their influence on other actors (as far as can be traced) and the directors they worked with. O.K. Let’s get began:
10) Robert Mitchum (1917-1997)
Robert Mitchum recognized for his apparent laconic acting. Apart from his fantastic performances in the Film-noirs (Crossfire (1947),Out of the Past (1947)) and Westerns (Man With the Gun (1955), Rio Bravo (1959), El Dorado (1966)) of the Fifties he’s likely greatest identified for his portrayals of the sadistic psychopaths in Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter (1955) and in J.L. Thompson’s Cape Worry (1961) which have been both tangibly sordid performances and amongst his best. Mitchum saw acting as a profession and deemed getting a star as a factor of minor importance. When he turned down the leading role in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) and as an alternative played a comparable role in Henry Hathaway’s 5 Card Stud (1968) as he did in Evening of the Hunter, he claimed that each are Westerns.
9) Robert de Niro (1943)
The cooperation in between Robert de Niro and his buddy and director Martin Scorsese was critical to the achievement of each artists. In their initial project together Imply Streets (1973), about a group of young adolescents in New York struggling to make a living out of loan-sharking, de Niro (who’s educated in the “system acting style”) steals the show as the violent and unpredictable Johnny Boy. Their genuine breakthrough came with Taxi Driver in 1976, in which de Niro played the introverted Vietnam vet Travis Bickle, who roams the streets in his cab, slowly transforming into a horrible avenger on the derailed globe he witnesses. De Niro won his second Oscar (The Godfather II (1974), his first as Supporting Actor) for his part as the legendary boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (soon after persuading Scorsese to direct the film). His most effective films of the Nineties are without having a doubt Goodfellas (1990) and Heat (1995). In the initial De Niro is completely cast by Scorsese as the middle-aged Irish hood of considerable ruthlessness and repute who is Ray Liotta’s mentor, Jim Conway. In Michael Mann’s masterly crime epic Heat he plays the master criminal Neil McGauley cast opposite (for the initially time in a film together) to the other film icon Al Pacino as his cop nemisis. In Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997) De Niro underplayed, that way giving his colleagues more space to excel.
eight) Burt Lancaster (1913-1994)
Burt Lancaster’s film profession started in the Forties in the stifling melodrama’s of Robert Siodmark (The Killers (1946), Criss Cross (1949). Following some “light” films in the early Fifties he returned to the genre of Film-noir in the dark film Sweet Smell of Achievement (1957) in which he played the cynical and highly effective columnist J.J. Hunsecker who destroys his sister’s connection with her boyfriend. Also memorable is his role in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and his Oscar winning performance in Elmer Gantry (1960). Lancaster also create an impressive career in Europe where he worked with the Italian directors Luchino Visconti (The Leopard and The Conversation Piece) and Bernardo Bertolucci (1900). His final important part was in Louis Malle’s masterpiece Atlantic City U.S.A. (1980)
7) James Stewart (1908-1997)
James Stewart, the extended thin man with his well-known drawling voice has been an vital major actor for thirty years and a modest and beloved star. His very first striking functionality was in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) by Frank Capra in which he played a gangly, shy and idealistic senator who exposes corruption. The Fifties has been his most decisive period of his acting profession. His startling performances in Anthony Mann’s Westerns (they created 5 with each other) in which he mostly personified grim and cynical males (The Naked Spur (1953) and in particular The Man From Laramie (1955)) are diametrically opposite to most of his work before and soon after this series of films. Stewart produced 4 films with the suspense maestro Alfred Hitchcock. The two finest (for in all probability each the actor and director) are the magnificently staged Rear Window (1954), with Stewart as the immobilised photographer who has a broken leg and witnesses a murder even though looking by way of his binoculars and the enigmatic and bleak mystery Vertigo (1958) in which he portrayed a neurotic detective who falls in enjoy with his friend’s wandering wife whom he has to trail. The old Hollywood star brought a level of neurotic power to his best roles that few Method actors could match.
six) Montgomery Clift (1920-1966)
“He’s a little queer, never you believe so?” John Wayne remarked to his secretary right after meeting Montgomery Clift his co-star in Red River (1948). Later, when the film was finished he was won more than by the great professionalism of the young “process” actor. When Clift was 15 he currently played smaller experienced roles. With his slender stature, thin face and expressive eyes he soon became a romantic hero, specifically when persistent rumors arose about a partnership with Elizabeth Taylor. With her he co-starred in three films (A Location in the Sun (1951), Raintree Country (1957) and Abruptly, Last Summer season (1959) and they remained friends for the rest of his life. In the Fifties Clift was the most sought just after actor but he was extremely reluctant and critical on the roles he chose. During the production of Raintree Countree Clift had a terrible car accident, which damaged him both physically and emotionally. His life right after that has been described as the longest suicide in the history of Hollywood (alcohol and drug addiction). Despite of his addiction he continued acting and had some memorable and heartbreaking performances in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Misfits (1961). He was nominated for an Academy award 4 times and died from a heart attack at the young age of 46 years old.
5) Henry Fonda (1905-1982)
Henry Fonda embodied integrity on the screen (and also in his private life). Just about all the characters he portrayed breathed dignity, from the young farmer major his family in John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath (1940), the drifter Gil carter defending a convict against an excited mob in William Wellman’s The Oxbow Incident (1943), Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946), the musician Manny Balestrero wrongfully accused of murder in Alfred Hitchock’s The Incorrect Man (1957) and Juror #eight in Twelve Angry Males (1957). In Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) he proofed he also could play a depraved and unscrupulous villain. The only “flaw” in his magnificent acting profession is that he extremely seldom appeared in comedies while he was identified as a humorous man in his personal life. For his portrayal of the grubby retired professor Norman Thayer Jr. in On Golden Pond (1981) he lastly won an Oscar.
4) James Dean (1931-1955)
Numerous books have been published and films have been released on James Dean, its subjects varying from the man behind the legend, his sexual preferences, his so-called death wish and his part as a symbol of the disillusioned youth. With a legacy of only three films, Dean played characters who embodied loneliness, aggravation and anger to whom a young audience (the post war generation) could recognize. He was educated in the Approach Acting style, like his idol Marlon Brando, and for the reason that of his troubled youth (his mother, of whom he was very fond, died when he was 9) he could empathize with his characters incredibly very easily. As Dean proofed in his roles as Cal Trask in Elia Kazan’s East of Eden (1955) in the emotionally charged scenes when he tries to win his father’s (Raymond Massey) respect or as the misunderstood adolescent Jim Stark in Nicolas Ray’s Rebel Without the need of a Result in (1955) who types a ‘surrogate family’. In Matthew McConaughey Total Net Worth (ahead of his tragic automobile accident) as Jett Rink in George Steven’s epic melodrama Giant (1956) he also showed his capability to play middle-aged men.
three) Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957)
Humphrey Bogart who would come to be a legend with his roles as the snarling and sardonic P.I.’s Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade started his acting career in the Twenties on Broadway. He had a breakthrough with his overall performance in the film The Petrified Forest (he currently played in the stage version the year before) in 1936, as the savaged Duke Mantee (inspired by John Dillinger). In the Forties he became one particular of the most dominating actors in Hollywood with great performances in High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), The Big Sleep (1946), Essential Largo (1948), The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) and The African Queen (1951). The characters Bogart played late in his career, like Dead Reckoning (1947), In a Lonely Location (1950) and The Tougher They Fall (1956) have been embittered, self-loathing varieties, and are his most daring and original perform.
two) James Cagney (1899-1986)
The thesis that a film function has to be a projection of the personality of the actor is in particular applicable on James Cagney. His capability to portray heroes, sympathetic villains and psychotic egoists with an electrifying energy, is unmatched in the history of cinema. His 1st top role in William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) as the gangster Tom Powers produced him an immediate star. In the following years he continued playing gangsters (Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), Roaring Twenties (1939) for the Warner Brothers studio who have been identified for their gritty and realistic images. In 1942 Cagney won the Oscar for Greatest Actor for his function in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy which showed his diversity. Soon after the comedy One particular, Two, Three in 1961 he retreated only to return a single far more time in the film Ragtime (1981) as the authoritative police chief Waldo.