The Ten Best Actors of All Time Relay

 “So what’s the idea behind the relay? I’ve created a list of what I think are the best actors. At the end of the post I, just like in a real relay race, hand over the baton to another blogger who will write his own post. This blogger will have to remove one actor (that is an obligation) and add his own choice and describe why he/she did this. At the end the blogger chooses another blogger to do the same. The idea is to make this a long race, so that enough bloggers get a chance to remove and add an actor. We will end up with a list (not ranked in order) which represents a common agreement of the best actors.” 

Nostra of My Filmviews valiantly came up with the idea for this blogging really and the lovely Stevee of Cinematic Paradox entered me into the sequence of things.

The Previous Entries: 

• My Filmviews
• The Focused Filmographer 
• Front Room Cinema 
• I Love That Film 
• FlixChatter 
• All Eyes on Screen 
• Time Well Spent 
• The Warning Sign 
• moviesandsongs365 
• And So It Begins... 
• cinematic corner. 
• Andy Buckle's Film Emporium 
• Duke and the Movies 
• Southern Vision 
• Defiant Success 
• Cinematic Paradox

THE ACTORS



Humphrey Bogart

Marlon Brando

 

Charlie Chaplin

 Daniel Day Lewis

Robert De Niro

Ralph Fiennes

Jack Lemmon

Paul Newman

Jack Nicholson

  Gregory Peck

Now, of course, the usually caveats come with making any “best of” list. Best for whom? What constitutes best? Should you include more of the old than the new because of that tell-tale tendency to regard what is more aged as more esteemed? And what of the actor’s oeuvre? How many films constitute a fine actor? How many great performances? How many bad performances are allowable? Am I over thinking this? You bet. Just in case you’re a wayfaring stranger who ended up here by chance it’s one of my traits. I put long and hard thought into it and made multiple lists and eventually I opted to excise Atticus Finch.

Gregory Pack has entered into cinematic royalty to a great extent for his Oscar winning work in To Kill a Mockingbird and he’s certainly a legend of his time. But, I cannot submit him as one of the very best. There is an actor in the ten who has a significant smaller range, but he's offered more to the trade. There's an actor whose work I've seen significantly less of then Peck, but he too offers up more of a reference point to greatness than I think Peck does, as good a performer as he is. (Apologies to all offended.) And, thus, I replace him with someone who I think is not only a finer technican, but an even more significant legend. Richard Burton.

I don’t have a “favourite” male actor. There’s a hodgepodge of about seven – three of them already on the list. I found myself debating between two of Oscars’ biggest losers and I opted for Richard.

I’d submit his work in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as one of the finest film performances of all time. He’s given one of the finest performances in a Tennessee Williams adaptation in The Night of the Iguana, gave the best Bond performance (and it wasn’t even a Bond film) in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and one of the finest Shakespearean performances in The Taming of the Shrew. I think he belongs on a list of best.

I point to Paolo (Okinawa Assault) to take up the baton and keep the ball rolling. He's full of opinions.