Who's the best actor in the hisroty of cinema?

[cigar joe]

This is definitely a hard topic to nail down because of the span of time involved.

TMC for the month of May has been airing on Tuesdaynights pre-code movies from the thirties and focusing on actresses. I watched "Baby Face" the other night that stared a young Barbra Stanwick. A lot of the pre code movies covered very racy and controversial topics. Stanwick plays a bar maid in a speakeasy whose father pimps her out to his customers. Her father dies in a still explosion and leaves her with four dollars. She contemplates working in a burlesque house "showing her form". But decides to go to New York and she if she can earn an honest living. She applies for a job at a bank and gets it after having sex with the personel director. She basically ends up sleeping her way to the top with all the department bosses, acquiring half a million in stocks an jewels on the way.

Stanwick also plated a hot role in "Double Imdemnity".

Another pre-code's topic as a menage a trois.

Just think if Leone had access to Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, Humprey Bogart and others, plus DeNiro and Woods, ;-).

[Rblondie]

Method actor: Brando  
Non-method: Olivier    
Actress: Bette Davis    

[Simon]

Robert De Niro of course!!

1900
Godfather Part II
Mean Streets
Taxi Driver
Guilty By Suspicion
Goodfellas
The Deer Hunter
King Of Comedy
Raging Bull
True Confessions
Once Upon A Time In America

Come on!
Try naming me another actor that can match those outstanding performances. Pacino comes close, but Bobby wins easy!!

[guybrush]

No new name to add, guys  
Bob De Niro is and will always be my favourite actor; he is second to none but... I'm afraid there's a but:
will he ever be able to choose or find a role which can bring him up to the standards he reached in the 70's and in the 80's?
In the 90's his only watchable movie was 'Heat', but maybe only because he had to try hard and 'compete' with my second best actor, Al Pacino...

[Il Buono]

Ok, ok, Bobby's great, but he has been playing the same character for years, this isolated unsympathetic figure... like Noodles.  Al Pacino has a greater variety in his roles and always lifts his films to Hymlayan heights...

[Christopher]

In the 90's his only watchable movie was 'Heat', but maybe only because he had to try hard and 'compete' with my second best actor, Al Pacino...

Heat is good, but I think De Niro's best roles in recent years have come in Jackie Brown and Wag the Dog. And I found Meet the Parents to be pretty funny.

But I don't believe he'll ever reach the heights of where he was when he did Taxi Driver, which is easily my favorite from him overall.

[Groggy]

  He may not be the BEST, but Robbie Coltrane is still my FAVORITE actor.  Though best-known for his comic roles, his straight acting is much understated - watch the original British version of "Cracker" and tell me he's not a great actor.  Robert Carlyle, De Niro, etc. are all up there too.  Oh, and William B. Davis.

[Groggy]

 AAGH!!!!!!  This is the same thread as before!!!!  I'm a real idiot!       I KNEW it looked familiar.

[cigar joe]

The reason for DeNiro's recent flood of so-so movies:

I'll clue you in, DeNiro has been for the last five years constructing a getaway that at one point was costing him 2 million dollars a month! That in turn translates into him doing a lot movies that he may not have chosen to do to cover the costs of quality construction and the very best of everything. Things were getting out of hand to the point that an outside business manager was called in to get things under control.

[Simon]

I don't know if you are aware of Hotdog magazine, but in this months issue it states that De Niro first went into autopilot in The Mission when British producer David Puttnam told him that he was not convinced that he was right for the picture. This really shocked De Niro as no director or producer had ever told him that before. Uncomfortable with the formal language of the script he got through it pulling funny twisted faces and nodding his head to sustitute acting. Sound familiar? But hey, does all that matter. Going by his output in the 70's and early 80's, he's entitled to some lazy performances as he gets older. De Niro could make ten crap movies every year for the next ten years and would still probably be regarded as the best actor in the history of cinema.

[cigar joe]

I agree, Di Niro is great when the material is great.

[aaronson]

Nobody mentioned Jack NICHOLSON?
Remember: easy rider, cookoo nest, Mississipi (Missouri?)falls, CHINATOWN,Batman,Mars attack,... help me.  

[aaronson]

But if we forget bloody Yankees:  Raimu, Toto (already mentioned),Chaplin,Mastroianni,De Sica, Harry Baur,Gerard Philipe , Michel Piccoli, Dirk Bogard,Laurence Oliver,Toshiro Mifune, Tony Leung,ALEC GUINESS....

[Groggy]

But if we forget bloody Yankees:  Raimu, Toto (already mentioned),Chaplin,Mastroianni,De Sica, Harry Baur,Gerard Philipe , Michel Piccoli, Dirk Bogard,Laurence Oliver,Toshiro Mifune, Tony Leung,ALEC GUINESS....

 . . . Gabriele Ferzetti, Alain Delon, Peter Lorre, Walter Gotell, Gian Maria Volonte, Klaus Kinski, Gottfried John, Tcheky Karyo, Romollo Valli, Adolfo Celi . . . and I already named a good many Brits beforehand, I think.

[cigar joe]

This topic is just too broad. I'll start a new one.