1FF's top 100 actors/actresses

[SALTIRE]

Guinness was my number one, and imo is the greatest screen actor of all time, he could play anything effortlessly and is one of those rare chameleon actors that didn't just inhabit a role, he became that person like Sellers did.

 

[Oaf]

Two people share joint 33rd. They both gained 22 points from 2 lists, and they are...

Will Ferrell

Henry Fonda

 

[Oaf]

Joint 30th has three people who managed 23 points from 2 lists each. They are:

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Alan Rickman

Adam Sandler

 

[SALTIRE]

Dear god there is some awful choices in these lists!

 

[lordofthepies]

adam sandler and will ferrell, in particular

 

[SALTIRE]

adam sandler and will ferrell, in particular

Amongst others, I suppose we shouldn't be elitist about it however, and if those who select them enjoy those actors, so be it.

 

[Craig]

My hat goes off to whoever voted Arnie, can't believe I overlooked him.

 

[Craig]

Christopher Lee.

I couldn't compile a list of my favourite actors without him. Legend of the genre doesn't even begin do him justice. First introduced to him as a nipper when I used to stay over at my nannan and grandad's for the night, the greatest film enthusiasts I ever knew, and classic horror came second only to old westerns in their house. Forget his appearances in LotR and Star Wars (and I enjoy both of those franschises) it is Hammer (and Gremlins 2) where he truly immortalised himself, and not only as Dracula.

I also forgot Peter Cushing, I am a failure in every respect.

 

[SALTIRE]

Christopher Lee.

I couldn't compile a list of my favourite actors without him. Legend of the genre doesn't even begin do him justice. First introduced to him as a nipper when I used to stay over at my nannan and grandad's for the night, the greatest film enthusiasts I ever knew, and classic horror came second only to old westerns in their house. Forget his appearances in LotR and Star Wars (and I enjoy both of those franschises) it is Hammer (and Gremlins 2) where he truly immortalised himself, and not only as Dracula.

I also forgot Peter Cushing, I am a failure in every respect.

My favourite Lee film is The Devil Rides Out, must've seen that film 50 times over the years (we had it on VHS back in the day and would shove it on along with many others when there was nothing on the telly). Both he and Cushing gave great performances in some awful films, and made them watchable because of it.

 

[Craig]

My favourite Lee film is The Devil Rides Out, must've seen that film 50 times over the years (we had it on VHS back in the day and would shove it on along with many others when there was nothing on the telly). Both he and Cushing gave great performances in some awful films, and made them watchable because of it.

I don't even...

 

[SALTIRE]

I don't even...

Well they did do some shit stuff back in the day!

 

[Craig]

 

[SALTIRE]

Great actors and I love them to bits, particularly Cushing, but not all their films were well done or good. Can we leave it there?

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

With 19 points, interestingly, is the only person to finish 2nd on a list and then appear on no more lists. He is:

44th:

John Wayne

Mine

Spoiler: tldr

If one is inclined (as is my wont) to interpret actors and films as units in a modern mythology, nodes in a giant hypertext, then he is it. The most enduring icon produced by film's biggest dream factory. He's less an actor than an anthropomorphism of a country, a way of looking at the world, America's answer to Marianne, Britannia, Achilles etc. You don't have to like his politics (I don't) to find that fascinating and powerful, and a testament to what cinema is/can be.

Halfwits (such as Pagnell, who has watched "all" of his 150+ films "several times", remember) say he was wooden and he couldn't act, which isn't true. He had rugged grace, charisma, magnetism, the sort of stiff presence required when you're being shot against a backdrop of 100 square miles of Monument Valley (just look at The Big Trail, a wide eyed kid surrounded by trucks loads of extras and materiel, but always what your eye is drawn too). He almost always played versions of himself (and was employed/written for for that express purpose) but he had range within that - compare She Wore A Yellow Ribbon to True Grit to Fort Apache, say. Could do tenderness and knockabout comedy as capably as the manly gruff stuff.

Did his best work w/ Ford and Hawks, who knew how to play with his archetype, to unlock the dark side & the subtext - Red River, The Searchers, The Quiet Man, Liberty Valance. And (cf the latter) the disparities between his myth and his actuality make his stardom all the more interesting and potent.

 

[SALTIRE]

Wayne certainly wasn't an actor that's for sure, he was awful both on screen and in life.

 

[ZianfrancoGoal]

Wayne certainly wasn't an actor that's for sure, he was awful both on screen and in life.

no need to be elitist about it however

 

[SALTIRE]

no need to be elitist about it however

Haha I suppose. He is one if the actors I truly despise though and who ruined many a potentially good film. Always hated him.

 

[mistermagic]

Say Oaf, you gonna do some write-ups for the top 20 or just kep posting pictures? I mean I have no idea who the guys you mention have done (slight exaggeration).

 

[Oaf]

Say Oaf, you gonna do some write-ups for the top 20 or just kep posting pictures? I mean I have no idea who the guys you mention have done (slight exaggeration).

I did intend on doing write ups once we started getting toward the top end of the list. Though to be honest, I feel like the write ups the people who nominated these entries are better than the stuff I'd come out with, so I may just leave it to the people who voted for the actors to give reasons as to why these people are so great.

But yeah, once we get top 25 or so I may put in a bit more info.

 

[Oaf]

Gaining 24 points from 2 lists is the highest rated Bond on our list...

29th:

Sean Connery

 

[Craig]

MOAR.

 

[SALTIRE]

Big Sean was one of mine, a great presence on screen and a very underated actor indeed (watch The Offence as an example). Classy, tough, sexy and full of charisma, he is definitely one of the great screen icons of all time. Not bad for an ex-milkman from Edinburgh.

 

[Aber gas]

Big Sean was one of mine, a great presence on screen and a very underated actor indeed (watch The Offence as an example). Classy, tough, sexy and full of charisma, he is definitely one of the great screen icons of all time. Not bad for an ex-milkman from Edinburgh.

Was he a milkman? Don't think he ever mentioned it

 

[Craig]

Yesh, he wash.

 

[SALTIRE]

Was he a milkman? Don't think he ever mentioned it

And a bodybuilder and model. Aye he got about did old Sean.

 

[Aber gas]

Big Sean was one of mine, a great presence on screen and a very underated actor indeed (watch The Offence as an example). Classy, tough, sexy and full of charisma, he is definitely one of the great screen icons of all time. Not bad for an ex-milkman from Edinburgh.

he's a brilliant actor. Obv bond/ red October / highlander but my favourite performance is in the untouchables. Hard as nails and he doesn't give a fuck. Best performance in a film full of great ones.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Barbara Stanwyck*

Mine (#1).

Another proto-feminist hero. Invariably played a Strong Woman, but could do it in a variety of ways: domineering, sexually aggressive Queen of the West types (Forty Guns, The Furies, The Violent Men), mega-vamp femme fatale (Double Indemnity), career woman denied nuclear family orthodoxy (her two Sirk movies).... could play classy or earthy, and bold, brassy and self-reliant with an undercurrent of vulnerability was her forte, often lending a depth and nuance that probably wasn't present in the screenplay. One of the more actorly types on my list too, espec. for those of this vintage. Her finest hour is the murder scene in Double Indemnity... tight, wordless one shot, her face bathed in light, her hubby getting killed off screen, her vicarious carnal thrill at it communicated by a glistening in her eyes, a flare of her nostrils... not overplayed, not underplayed, amazing.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Henry Fonda

If Wayne was (is?) America's avatar of swaggering macho hawk-ishness then maybe Fonda was their better angel, a model of rectitude, probity, and a measured kind of heroism. Obv that image was ripe to be toyed with too, which is maybe where he was most interesting... Ford playing up the stiffness and stuffiness in My Darling Clementine, or reframing it as the hallmark of a priggish martinet in Fort Apache (this stuff also quite interesting given what his kids ended up doing...). Also party to one of the all time bits of stunt-casting as child-killer Frank in Once Upon A Time In the West.

Great voice too. If the acting hadn't worked out he could surely have made it as an old timey baseball radio announcer with those oaky pipes.

 

[SALTIRE]

Had Fonda at six on my list; he wasn't afraid to be risky with his image and could play evil well, or a down-trodden lad trying to keep his family together in Grapes Of Wrath, as well as playing straight as an arrow leads in Ford films or in 12 Angry Men; or being comic in The Cheyenne Social Club with the great Jimmy Stewart; playing Presidents in Young Mr. Lincoln, as well as a fictional President who has to make grave decisions that could put millions of people in peril in Fail Safe; or a dogged copper in The Boston Strangler.

If I switch over and see a film with him in it, no matter the time of day or night; I will watch it through, he could just carry films effortlessly, and more often than not, they were fine films anyway.

 

[Oaf]

In 28th is the second person to make it onto three lists, and he gained 25 points from these three lists:

Al pacino