My Favorite Actors of All Time
by brutuslevi | created - 14 Nov 2013 | updated - 25 Nov 2013 | PublicDelicated for Shurum, The Juggler screenwriter http://www.imdb.com/user/ur41124186/
1. Jean-Pierre Léaud
Actor | Les quatre cents coups
Jean-Pierre Léaud is not everybody's cup of tea for sure, but will remain an important name in film history. As an actor he can be adored or hated for exactly the same reasons: he is one of those rare players that directors let improvise his dialogue, which gets on certain viewers' nerves while it ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. The 400 Blows (1959)
2. L'amour en fuite (1979)
3. Two English Girls (1971)
2. 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 ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
2. Profession: reporter (1975)
3. The Shining (1980)
3. James Stewart
Actor | Vertigo
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Vertigo (1957)
2. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
3. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
4. Dustin Hoffman
Actor | Tootsie
Dustin Lee Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California, to Lillian (Gold) and Harry Hoffman, who was a furniture salesman and prop supervisor for Columbia Pictures. He was raised in a Jewish family (from Ukraine, Russia-Poland, and Romania). Hoffman graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955, ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. The Graduate (1967)
2. Marathon Man (1976)
3. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
5. Michel Piccoli
Actor | Le mépris
This suave, elegant character star was a ubiquitous presence in French cinema for nearly seven decades. His distinguished career extended to both stage and screen and his versatility was such that he could take on just about any persona (in his own words: "I do not put on an act... I slip away ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Contempt (1963)
2. Belle de Jour (1967)
3. Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
6. William Holden
Actor | Stalag 17
Billy Wilder proclaimed William Holden to be "the ideal motion picture actor". For almost four decades, the handsome, affable 'Golden Holden' was among Hollywood's most durable and engaging stars. He was born William Franklin Beedle Jr., one of three sons to a high school English teacher, Mary ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Stalag 17 (1953)
2. Network (1976)
3. The Wild Bunch (1969)
7. Jean-Paul Belmondo
Actor | Pierrot le fou
The son of the renowned French sculptor Paul Belmondo, he studied at Conservatoire National Superieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD); after the minor stage performances he made his screen debut in À pied, à cheval et en voiture (1957) but the episodes with his participation were cut before ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Pierrot le fou (1965)
2. Missippi Mermaid (1969)
3. Breathless (1960)
8. John Wayne
Actor | True Grit
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.
Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. The Quiet Man (1952)
2. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
3. Rio Bravo (1959)
9. André Dussollier
Actor | Un long dimanche de fiançailles
André Dussollier was born on February 17, 1946 in Annecy, Haute-Savoie, France. He is an actor, known for A Very Long Engagement (2004), Tell No One (2006) and Amélie (2001).
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Private Fears in Public Places (2006)
2. Wild Grass (2009)
3. L'amour à mort (1984)
10. Orson Welles
Actor | Citizen Kane
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. The Third Man (1949)
2. Touch of Evil (1958)
3. Citizen Kane (1941)
11. Jean Marais
Actor | La Belle et la Bête
Jean Marais was a popular French cinema actor and director who played over 100 roles in film and on television, and was also known for his many talents as a writer, painter and sculptor.
He was born Jean Alfred Villain-Marais on December 11, 1913, in Cherbourg, France. His father practiced ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Orphée (1950)
2. Donkey Skin (1970)
3. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
12. Woody Allen
Writer | Annie Hall
Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.
Allen ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. Zelig (1983)
2. Love and Death (1975)
3. Deconstructing Harry (1997)
13. Robert De Niro
Actor | Cape Fear
One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. The Deer Hunter (1978)
2. The Raging Bull (1980)
3. Taxi Driver (1976)
14. Marcello Mastroianni
Actor | La dolce vita
Marcello Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, Italy in 1924, but soon his family moved to Turin and then Rome. During WW2 he was sent to a German prison camp, but he managed to escape and hide in Venice. He debuted in films as an extra in Marionette (1939), then started working for the Italian ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. La dolce Vita (1960)
2. 8½ (1963)
3. A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973)
15. Gérard Depardieu
Actor | Cyrano de Bergerac
Gérard Depardieu was born in Châteauroux, Indre, France, to Anne Jeanne Josèphe (Marillier) and René Maxime Lionel Depardieu, who was a metal worker and fireman. Young delinquent and wanderer in the past, Depardieu started his acting career at the small traveling theatre "Café de la Gare", along ...
His Top 3 Acting Performances:
1. The Woman Next Door (1981)
2. My American Uncle (1980)
3. Potiche (2010)
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