1FF's top 100 actors/actresses

[SALTIRE]

One of the factors in my list was longevity and hence I avoided a lot of the new younger actors that are promising. Even one or two older ones that are probably on a lot of other lists I've excluded as they haven't stretched their selves in a long time and I will comment on this when I see their names appear.

 

[Craig]

Oaf, I'm having laptop issues and my list is on there, can we extend the deadline please?

edit:nevermind

 

[Oaf]

Nice, a couple more last second lists in to update and then we should be good to get this thing kicked off today. It's all absolutely up in the air right now as it stands, 3 names are starting to gain a nice lead but a single half decent appearance in a list for a lot of other people will put them right in the mix to top this thing. It's all very exciting. This is the sort of excitement that only a forum list can create.

 

[Oaf]

Well, the votes have all been added up and the list is finalized. It remained close the whole way...

Just need to organize the fucker properly now and we should be good to go.

13 lists were submitted in total, yet no actor appeared on more than 5 lists... and only one person manages that. The rest were on 4 or less. 162 actors names were submitted in total, and 10 points are needed to break into what will be our top 101.

 

[Oaf]

And of course just as I'm about to start this thing up 1FF died. Of fucking course it did.

But it shall not defeat the listing goodness!

So I present to you, the good old one pointers. The ones that clung on to the ass end of a list, holding onto those bigger names and hoping to perhaps give a little one point boost to a name to try to prop it up a bit, or perhaps decide a tie breaker by making a name appear on multiple lists. But no. They managed one list so were in other words a WASTED VOTE.

One point LOSERS:

Bunta Sugawara
Tom Wilkinson
Hayden Panettiere
Gregory peck
Gabriel Macht
Mia Wasikowska
Peter Mullan
Brian Glover
Colin Farrell

 

[Oaf]

One more before I go, the 2 pointers. These include one of two Doctor Who companions to have been nominated plus Buzz Lightyear himself.

Two pointers:

Reiko Ike
Ben Stiller
Jenna Coleman
Carey Mulligan
Michael Redgrave
Tim Allen
Judi Dench
Wes Studi

 

[Craig]

Two of mine gone.

Brian Glover - wrestler/actor/writer - Best remembered for his roles in Kes, An American Werewolf in London and Alien 3 (my fave of the series). Definitely a selection influenced more by sentimentality than any other in my list. Still worthy of a place though I reckon.

Wes Studi - another personal favourite of mine who I didn't expect would appear on many lists. Been mostly typecast in Native American roles throughout his career. However, I don't see that as a bad thing, as it was largely down to his fantastic turns as Magua in Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans and the titular Geronimo in the 1993 biopic that I included him. He was also ace in one of my favourite 90's creature feature horrors too, which is a bonus.

 

[Oaf]

Here be the 3 pointers, featuring the other Doctor Who companion to have been nominated, Loki and Wormtail.

Katie Holmes
Cate Blanchett
Tom Hiddleston
Catherine Tate
Stephen Graham
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Timothy Spall
Timothy Olyphant
Edwige Fenech

 

[Craig]

Timothy Olyphant

Mine. Justified choice.

 

[SALTIRE]

Spall was mine, he is such a versatile actor and who knew he'd be so good after seeing him play Barry in Auf Wiedersehn Pet.

 

[Christian Slater]

Catherine Tate?

 

[Oaf]

Catherine Tate?

See, that's what I thought when I first saw her name, but honestly, she's probably like the 2nd best Doctor Who companion character of the lot for me. Credit where it's due, she did a very good job with that when everybody wrote her off as being a shit choice from the second she was cast.

Anyway, 4 pointers randomly being done here at half 1 in the morning:

Tony Leung
Brad Pitt
Brad Dourif
Cary Grant
James Franco
James Earl Jones

 

[Craig]

Brad Dourif

Another of mine.

A mainstay of the horror genre, most widely recognised as the voice of Chucky. So much more to his CV than that though including critically acclaimed turns in the likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Mississippi Burning and being a favourite of directors such as Werner Herzog and David Lynch, plus a successful career on the small screen. Fantastic character actor, just a bonus he's a legend in the horror genre.

 

[SALTIRE]

Ooh Tony Leung is a good shout, cracking actor. Catherine Tate can act when she wants, I dont doubt her ability in the slightest, but it was still an unusual choice imo.

I was going to put in Dourif but I faltered at the last minute and went for someone else.

 

[Nilsson]

Recently watched Deadwood and Brad Dourif is excellent in that (along with pretty much everyone else in that series).

 

[Oaf]

The 5 pointers! These people let their dreams just be dreams instead of being able to JUST... DO IT.

Shia Labeouf
Jonah Hill
Rosamund Pike
Charles Laughton
Michael J Fox
Emma Watson
Kerry Washington

 

[Oaf]

The six pointers feature the fuckin' scarecrow and Rocky himself.

Cillian Murphy
Humphrey Bogart
Charlton Heston
Sylvester Stallone
Richard Harris
Vince Vaughn
Eva Green
Ellen Page

Stallone seemed to be somebody I thought would fare better in this... but he made only a single list, and so misses out entirely on the top 100.

 

[Oaf]

And here's the 7 pointers as well because we all just want to get past this bit and get to the main list:

Liam Neeson
Kaley Cuoco
Noomi Rapace
Seth Rogen

I'd say that Liam Neeson probably deserved to make this list, if only for that one superb film he was in where he gave a great performance. I am, of course, referring to his run as Qui Gon Jinn. The greatest Jedi of all the time.

 

[Christian Slater]

Saltire will be pissed you didn't mention Rob Roy in reference to Neeson.

 

[Craig]

Charles Laughton

Richard Harris

Two more of mine.

Charles Laughton - timeless turns as Quasimodo (not the Disney one), Captain Bligh and Javert to name but a few. Daniel Day-Lewis' fave thesp, nuff said.

Richard Harris - portrayals of Rafer in The Wild Geese and English Bob in Unforgiven being my favourites of his.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Mines! (TLDR)

Spoiler: blah blah

I'm not really interested in actors as thespy thesps thesping. When DVD extras get to artistes staring into the middle distance and pondering their motivation I start checking my phone. I like actors in the Bressonian sense. As models, icons, physical presences. And in the sense in which studio system and genre cinema tended to employ them - as units of meaning in and of themselves, a manifestation of a set of values, a way of looking at the world, some other textual value. That is not to say that their performances were negligible or interchangeable - quite the opposite. I also think this sort of conception of an actor doesn't really exist any more. Or not to the extent that it used to, anyway.

MINES:

Bunta Sugawara

Star of a gazillion nu-wave yakuza movies. Face like an anvil carved into Mount Rushmore, a long limbed knot of muscle, a volcano perpetually on the point of eruption. Icon of gritty nobility treading water in a sewer of cynicism.

Reiko Ike

Tough gal star of action-cum-sex movies. There's a tension in most of these movies, between exploitation and adoration/fetishisation. Between show-us-yer-tits and Fordian veneration in the face of wretched specimens of debased male sexuality. No-one played that better. She is what Tarantino thought Kill Bill was.

Edwige Fenech

Whole-lotta-woman star of Italian genre heyday. Made a bunch of bad sex comedies halfway tolerable, but did her best work in giallo movies, esp Sergio Martino's. Sultry temptress, enigmatic femme fatale, more interesting and more talented progenitor of what is now called a Scream Queen.

Tony Leung

Hong Kong uber star. Spectacularly cool dude. Tell me a cooler dude than Tony Leung. You can't.

Humphrey Bogart

First one I foort someone else might have voted for. What can you say. Raymond Chandler might be my favourite writer. Whenever I read his prose it's Humphrey Bogart's voice I hear in my head. Maybe the greatest star of Golden Era Hollywood. Effortless charm, effortless cool, a magnetic screen presence, but not quite the matinee idol - possessed of a low key sardonicism, elegant but tough, an anti hero before it was obligatory.

 

[Oaf]

And here be your 8 pointers:

Larry David
Chiwetel Ejifor
John Mills
Jason Segel
Kate Mara
Michel Simon

 

[Stagat]

Mines! (TLDR)

Spoiler: blah blah

I'm not really interested in actors as thespy thesps thesping. When DVD extras get to artistes staring into the middle distance and pondering their motivation I start checking my phone. I like actors in the Bressonian sense. As models, icons, physical presences. And in the sense in which studio system and genre cinema tended to employ them - as units of meaning in and of themselves, a manifestation of a set of values, a way of looking at the world, some other textual value. That is not to say that their performances were negligible or interchangeable - quite the opposite. I also think this sort of conception of an actor doesn't really exist any more. Or not to the extent that it used to, anyway.

MINES:

Bunta Sugawara

Star of a gazillion nu-wave yakuza movies. Face like an anvil carved into Mount Rushmore, a long limbed knot of muscle, a volcano perpetually on the point of eruption. Icon of gritty nobility treading water in a sewer of cynicism.

Reiko Ike

Tough gal star of action-cum-sex movies. There's a tension in most of these movies, between exploitation and adoration/fetishisation. Between show-us-yer-tits and Fordian veneration in the face of wretched specimens of debased male sexuality. No-one played that better. She is what Tarantino thought Kill Bill was.

Edwige Fenech

Whole-lotta-woman star of Italian genre heyday. Made a bunch of bad sex comedies halfway tolerable, but did her best work in giallo movies, esp Sergio Martino's. Sultry temptress, enigmatic femme fatale, more interesting and more talented progenitor of what is now called a Scream Queen.

Tony Leung

Hong Kong uber star. Spectacularly cool dude. Tell me a cooler dude than Tony Leung. You can't.

Humphrey Bogart

First one I foort someone else might have voted for. What can you say. Raymond Chandler might be my favourite writer. Whenever I read his prose it's Humphrey Bogart's voice I hear in my head. Maybe the greatest star of Golden Era Hollywood. Effortless charm, effortless cool, a magnetic screen presence, but not quite the matinee idol - possessed of a low key sardonicism, elegant but tough, an anti hero before it was obligatory.

Shia Labeouf wasn't yours?

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

And here be your 8 pointers:
Michel Simon

Gargoyle faced French character actor before that was really a thing. An eccentric in real life (lived with a house full of monkeys, owned a world class collection of erotica, suffered partial paralysis due to make up poisoning during the 50s......) who generally played eccentrics on screen (unfortunately "eccentric" often = offensive jewish stereotype, but hey). Made a good or better film every decade from the 20s to the 70s, which must put him in some pretty select company.

Shia Labeouf wasn't yours?

#21, last cut, poor lad.

 

[hodge]

3 down from me so far

Gabriel Macht
Tom Hiddleston
Kate Mara

 

[lordofthepies]

Colin Farrell, Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn and Seth Rogen gone from my list.

Can't wait to see who else is on your list.

 

[Oaf]

Here are the 9 pointers, the final group of people to have entirely failed to have made the list:

Faye Dunaway
Jason Statham
Hugo Weaving
Jack Lemmon

Every single other person you nominated for this thing has managed to at least crack into the top 101.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Faye Dunaway

Mine. Icon of New Hollywood. Classic Hollywood was more generous with female roles than some received-wisdom commentaries allow, but it is still true to say that things started to change during the late 60s, and her most famous films are indicative: Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown, Network. For all that she had something of the golden era siren about her too tho, & her 2 best films were period pieces set during the 30s... she had glamour, southern belle luminosity, cheek bones a la Dietrich. Career went down the shitter post-Mommie Dearest, supposedly an enormous pain in the backside to work with. Might have been a female James Dean if she'd had the foresight to peg it circa 1978.

 

[Craig]

It's just occurred to me that I don't have a single actress on my list. Shameful.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]