Premiere Magazine has put together a Top 100 Performances of All Time list. This list was last updated by them on 14 March 2006. Here’s the top 25 of those (you want the full list? click the link!)
- Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954)
- Meryl Streep as Sophie Zawistowska in Sophie’s Choice (1982)
- Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
- Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950)
- James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
- Dustin Hoffman as “Ratso” Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- James Stewart as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
- Gene Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein (1974)
- Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980)
- Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989)
- Jack Nicholson as “Badass” Buddusky in The Last Detail (1973)
- Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1968)
- Robert Duvall as Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies (1983)
- Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin in Big (1988)
- Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious (1946)
- Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in Malcolm X (1992)
- Emily Watson as Bess McNeill in Breaking the Waves (1996)
- Paul Newman as Frank Galvin in The Verdict (1982)
- Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974)
- Giulietta Masina as Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria (1957)
- Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands in Edward Scissorhands (1990)
- Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999)
- Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
- Greta Garbo as Ninotchka in Ninotchka (1939)
And all this because I watched Young Frankenstein tonight (#9 on the list).
And, yes, my personal all-time favorite movie character was #79! (Go look for yourself.) If you want to see the entire list all at one shot, visit Listology.
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