15. AMITABH BACHCHAN (1942 - )
Devotees of Bollywood cinema won’t need any explanation for why Bachchan is included here. But for those of you who are scratching your heads, imagine a movie star with the brooding good looks of a young Al Pacino, combined with formidable gifts for goofy comedy and intense drama alike. Now imagine that this supposedly imaginary star is one hell of a dancer as well -- maybe not Fred Astaire, but with an infectious dance style nonetheless. Put those ingredients together and you’ve got Bachchan, who was the reigning superstar of Bollywood cinema in the late seventies and early eighties before being temporarily sidelined due to a stunt gone bad on the set of his movie Coolie. Bachchan -- known to fans as “Big B” -- began his career as the Mumbai film industry’s resident “Angry Young Man,” but quickly segued into more heroic roles in a string of hits that came at the end of the 1970s. With his imposing figure and deep baritone voice, Big B became best-known for what were called “masala movies” (such as the 1978 classic Don, featuring Big B in a dual role) that required the combination of comedy, drama, romance, action, and dancing that few actors could provide, but which Bachchan could pull off almost effortlessly. And he looked good doing it, too -- who else could not only keep his dignity, but actually look cool in that purple outfit and newsboy hat ensemble he sported in Amar Akbar Anthony? Since appearing on the scene in 1969, Big B has appeared in more than 175 movies, plus innumerable television appearances and a stint as host of India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, all of which have helped to make him one of Bollywood’s biggest names even today. Unlike many leading men of foreign descent, Big B never made the move to Hollywood. But then, he didn’t have to -- with his talent and charisma, Hollywood clearly needed Amitabh Bachchan more than he needed Hollywood.
14. ROBERT DENIRO (1943 - )
Like too many actors of his time, driven by personal quirks that become obsessions, freed from the harsh demands of the studio system, and spoiled by unthinkable wealth, Robert DeNiro seems to have decided to spend his waning years making everyone forget why he was once one of the greatest actors in the world. But even if he made the worst possible choices from now until his end – even, I daresay, if he pursued the career path of an Al Pacino – he would never do so much damage that he could unmake the reputation he built as a younger man. If the last 25 years on his résumé were wiped clean, he’d stand as one of the finest screen performers of his or any other generation. Never before had someone allowed their Method approach to so fully consume their very existence; while Marlon Brando was unable to use the teachings of Lee Strasburg to combat his own worldly appetites, DeNiro was able to mold and shape his appearance, his personality, his very essence as easily he did his mind. Though often typecast as playing gangsters and lowlifes, his special gift was to never play the same gangster lowlife twice. The bristling Johnny Boy of Mean Streets, eaten up by his own energy, is a world away from the quiet, calculating Vito Corleone of The Godfather Part II; both are entirely foreign to Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, probably the most striking example of alienation in movie history; and none of those characters seem like they were played by the same actor – and could it have been only one actor? – who played Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. And as much as he seems to have set his career on coast, think of all that would be lost if his post-1983 film career were erased: as well as some nuanced explorations further into the territory of gangsters and tough guys, DeNiro has put in memorable appearances in Wag the Dog, We’re No Angels, Midnight Run, and Brazil, even risking a glorious failure (like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mad Dog and Glory or Cape Fear) when he sensed he could do something new with a role. DeNiro has a lot of bad to make up for, but my money is on his restlessness and intensity yielding at least one or two more incredible performances before his day is done.
13. GEORGE CLOONEY (1961 - )
Back in June, during a post comparing the original 1960 Ocean’s Eleven to its 2001 remake, I relayed a tale about the day my fellow Screengrabber Scott Von Doviak hepped me to the fact that we had to start respecting the Cloon. The occasion was the 1998 release of Steven Soderbergh’s egregiously underrated Elmore Leonard adaptation, Out of Sight, in which Clooney evolved from the floppy-haired TV star of ER and wannabe nipple-suited matinee idol of Batman & Robin into a genuine movie star, the kind of old school Leading Man who brings class and gravity to the art of film acting while never taking it too seriously, the type of celebrity for whom tuxedos and red carpets were invented, a box office behemoth who brings A-list heat and polish to indie films and indie quality and depth to the mainstream. A cool cat, rat pack successor to Bogart, Sinatra and Nicholson, Clooney further infuriates the mere mortals among us by not only being talented, good-looking and socially active (serving recently as a United Nations “messenger of peace” AND a mediator between “the Suits” and his fellow creative types during the Writer’s Guild strike), but he also seems like a genuinely nice, relatively humble guy, making it impossible to even hate him despite our (okay, my) intensely seething jealousy.
12. JEAN GABIN (1904-1976)
One of the great pleasures of French cinema is the wide variety of noses among its leading men. For every relatively petite nose that you’ll find on the face of an Alain Delon or Benoit Magimel, there’s a Gerard Depardieu or Jean-Paul Belmondo. But the king of the generously be-schnozzed acteurs was the great Jean Gabin, leading light of the French films of the 1930s. Not being blessed with fashion-plate looks, Gabin’s appearance proved ideal for the scruffy proto-noir films that French filmmakers were making at the time, from the underworld figure of Pepe le Moko to the reformed criminal in Port of Shadows. Likewise, he was a great match for the sensibility of master filmmaker Jean Renoir, who cast him in roles as diverse as the pragmatic prisoner Marechal in Grand Illusion and the ill-fated sucker of a train engineer in La Bete Humaine. Gabin flirted with Hollywood stardom in 1942’s Moontide, but he was better-suited to his home country. Well into his fifties and sixties -- his nose more resplendent than ever -- he remained viable as a leading man, even romancing the young Jeanne Moreau in 1952’s Touchez Pas Au Grisbi. All the while, he was the epitome of big-screen cool even before the French New Wave came along to define it for us.
11. ROBERT MITCHUM (1917-1997)
If you were asked to guess which major American movie star had once served time on a chain gang, Mitchum might not necessarily be your first answer. On the other hand, maybe he would be, and you'd probably pitch his name out there before you thought to try mentioning Donald O'Connor or Steve Guttenberg. You might need a few more tries to guess that he was the one who wrote the oratorio that was performed at the Hollywood Bowl and cut the calypso record that made fun of Elvis Presley. Though he broke in by working in Westerns, Mitchum's sleepy-eyed, reptilian presence was made for film noir -- nobody, not even Bogart, looked more natural in a trenchcoat -- and he even carried some of the atmosphere of noir into projects set far from the rain-streaked city streets, most notably in his greatest role as the murderous preacher with the words "LOVE" and "HATE" tattooed between his knuckles in Charles Laughton's hypnotic classic The Night of the Hunter. Part of Mitchum's myth, which he liked to keep alive through some of the most entertaining interviews ever given by a mortal man, is that the fatalistic manner of his characters in movies like Out of the Past was an emanation of his own truly not giving a shit, and people sometimes even point to the very great number of truly shitty movies he made to back up their theory that the man was the real, supremely indifferent thing: for them, if it turned out that Mitchum ever bothered to read one of his scripts before shooting began, it would spoil everything. I hate to burst their bubble, but if Mitchum hadn't been a committed, serious actor working his hardest at appearing so unconcerned, it's doubtful that Charles Laughton would have wanted him within a mile of the set of his directorial debut. (In fact, Laughton called Mitchum up personally when he was casting the film. The story goes that Laughton told Mitchum that he needed to fill the role of an unredeemed bastard, and that Mitchum replied, "Present.") Mitchum also had a softer side, which was best displayed in one of his finest but least-known films, The Sundowners, in which he plays an Australian sheep herder whose inability to live a settled existence is a source of torment to his wife (Deborah Kerr).
Click Here for Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight
Contributors: Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent