Best actors
by royvanderlee | created - 08 Nov 2011 | updated - 17 Jul 2012 | PublicFavorite actors of all time in random order
1. Cary Grant
Actor | North by Northwest
Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in ...
Charade
2. Jack Lemmon
Actor | The Apartment
Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers ...
Some like it Hot
3. Lee Van Cleef
Actor | Escape from New York
One of the great movie villains, Clarence Leroy Van Cleef, Jr. was born in Somerville, New Jersey, to Marion Lavinia (Van Fleet) and Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef, Sr. His parents were of Dutch ancestry. Van Cleef started out as an accountant. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard minesweepers and sub ...
Deaht rides a Horse
4. Joseph Cotten
Actor | The Third Man
Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Jr. was born in Petersburg, Virginia, into a well-to-do Southern family. He was the eldest of three sons born to Sally Whitworth (Willson) and Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Sr., an assistant postmaster.
Jo (as he was known) and his brothers Whit and Sam spent their summers at their...
Shadow of a Doubt
5. Henry Fonda
Actor | 12 Angry Men
This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, ...
Once upon a Time in the West
6. Steve Buscemi
Actor | Fargo
Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy (Wilson), a restaurant hostess, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker. He is of Italian (father) and English, Dutch, and Irish (mother) descent. He became interested in acting during his last year of high school. After graduating, he moved to...
Reservoir Dogs
7. Philip Seymour Hoffman
Actor | The Master
Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in ...
The Big Lebowski
8. Christoph Waltz
Actor | Django Unchained
Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for his work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained (2012). For each performance, he won...
Inglrourious Basterds
9. Al Pacino
Actor | Serpico
Alfredo James "Al" 'Pacino established himself as a film actor during one of cinema's most vibrant decades, the 1970s, and has become an enduring and iconic figure in the world of American movies.
He was born April 25, 1940 in Manhattan, New York City, to Italian-American parents, Rose (nee Gerardi)...
Heat
10. Jack Nicholson
Actor | Chinatown
Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee. Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors - the other being Michael Caine - who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the '60s through ...
The Shining
11. Michael Caine
Actor | The Dark Knight
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of ...
The Italian Job
12. Samuel L. Jackson
Actor | Pulp Fiction
Samuel L. Jackson is an American producer and highly prolific actor, having appeared in over 100 films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000), Formula 51 (2001), Black Snake Moan (2006), Snakes on a Plane (2006), and the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005), ...
Pulp Fiction
13. Bill Murray
Actor | Lost in Translation
Bill Murray is an American actor, comedian, and writer. The fifth of nine children, he was born William James Murray in Wilmette, Illinois, to Lucille (Collins), a mailroom clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, who sold lumber. He is of Irish descent. Among his siblings are actors Brian Doyle-Murray, ...
Lost in Translation
14. Daniel Day-Lewis
Actor | There Will Be Blood
Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing ...
There will be Blood
15. Willem Dafoe
Actor | Spider-Man
Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large ...
Boondock Saints
16. Vincent Cassel
Actor | Black Swan
Blue-eyed Vincent Cassel was born in Paris to a leading actor father, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and a journalist mother, Sabine Litique. Often labeled as a tough guy because of his roles, eclectic choices and talent have made of him a star of European cinema. First in La haine (1995), the young actor, ...
Black Swan
17. John Goodman
Actor | 10 Cloverfield Lane
John Stephen Goodman's an American film, TV & stage actor. He was born in Affton, Missouri to Virginia Roos (Loosmore), a waitress and saleswoman & Leslie Francis Goodman, a postal worker who died when he was a small child. He's of English, Welsh & German ancestry. He's best known for his role as ...
The Big Lebowski
18. Bruce Willis
Actor | Die Hard
Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for playing wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films. Collectively, he has appeared in films that have grossed in excess of $2.5 billion USD.
Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany,...
Die Hard
19. Ryan Gosling
Actor | Blue Valentine
Born Ryan Thomas Gosling on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario, Canada, he is the son of Donna (Wilson), a secretary, and Thomas Ray Gosling, a traveling salesman. Ryan was the second of their two children, with an older sister, Mandi. His ancestry is French-Canadian, as well as English, ...
Drive
20. Ken Watanabe
Actor | The Last Samurai
Ken Watanabe was born on October 21, 1959 in Uonuma, Japan. Both of his parents were teachers: his mother taught general education and his dad taught calligraphy. He became interested in acting at the age of 24, when a director of England's National Theater Company, where he was studying, told him ...
Letters from Iwo Jima
21. Edward Norton
Actor | Fight Club
American actor, filmmaker and activist Edward Harrison Norton was born on August 18, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, and was raised in Columbia, Maryland.
His mother, Lydia Robinson "Robin" (Rouse), was a foundation executive and teacher of English, and a daughter of famed real estate developer ...
Fight Club
22. Kevin Spacey
Actor | L.A. Confidential
Kevin Spacey Fowler, better known by his stage name Kevin Spacey, is an American actor of screen and stage, film director, producer, screenwriter and singer. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s before obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in...
American Beauty
23. Alan Rickman
Actor | Die Hard
Alan Rickman was born on a council estate in Acton, West London, to Margaret Doreen Rose (Bartlett), of English and Welsh descent, and Bernard Rickman, of Irish descent, who worked at a factory. Alan Rickman had an older brother (David), a younger brother (Michael), and a younger sister (Sheila). ...
Die Hard
24. Clive Owen
Actor | Children of Men
British actor Clive Owen is one of a handful of stars who, though he is best known for his art house films, can handle more mainstream films with equal measures of grace and skill. Owen is typically cast as characters whose primary traits are a balance of physical strength, intellect, conflicting ...
Closer
25. Clint Eastwood
Actor | Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in ...
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Tell Your Friends