The finest acting in a film.....ever!

[Thomk]

Oh Think, I wish you would Thomk before starting yet another post which results in yet another 'list thread'.

Think Thomk Think...

 

[raleighnut]

I always thought John Wayne was good. He played a perfect John Wayne in every film he was in.

 

[Davos87]

View: http://youtu.be/VBe_guezGGc

Oscar standard.

 

[smutchin]

I always thought John Wayne was good. He played a perfect John Wayne in every film he was in.

Yeah, but he could never play Keanu Reeves the way Keanu does. He always brings a certain Reevesian quality to the role that I don't think anyone else could quite pull off.

 

[coffeejo]

River Phoenix in Stand by Me. Unlike many child actors, the kid could.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Anthony Hopkins and Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs"

 

[Profpointy]

Raif Feines in Coriolanus would take some beating, though Alec Guiness in, well, everything except Star Wars, should be up there too.

And for TV series you'd have to have Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. Having read the books, Brett seemed to actually be Holmes there in the flesh rather than merely portraying him. Tragically Brett took his own life, seemingly having lost his mind to the extent he believed Holmes had somehow possessed him so there's a very dark side to it all

 

[Levo-Lon]

Morgan Freeman Shawshank..

tho there are many greats

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Richard Chaves in Predator. He builds up the paranoia in a wonderfully Roy Scheideresque way.

Should it not be Roy Scheider then?

 

[Drago]

Jesse Ventura in Predator.

 

[Fnaar]

Martine McCutcheon in Love, Actually

 

[winjim]

It's a tricky one. My vote goes to Meryl Streep (possibly the finest actress of all time) in Sophie's Choice.

Spoiler alert - This clip is the "choice" in question which appears near the end of the film and until then is not revealed.

Additional alert - It may be one of the most horrific, saddest scenes in film history - be warned!

If you still want to have a look - Sophie is a holocaust survivor who has been hiding a guilty secret throughout the film and this is a flashback which reveals the cause of her ruinous mental state. It shows her queuing to enter Auschwitz with her children where some people are being taken into the camp and some directly to the gas chambers...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaPBzhEsCL0

Is it not customary to put the spoiler, you know, behind a spoiler.

Spoiler

'cos now I know what the choice is, so there's no point me watching the film

 

[MontyVeda]

This is a toughie... one person's perception of excellent emotive acting is another's over acting. But that aside, I can't decide on Ant or Dec in Alien Autopsy.

 

[accountantpete]

Sidney Poitier/Rod Steiger - In The Heat Of The Night

 

[midlife]

John Mills in "Ice Cold in Alex". Springs to mind

Shaun