1 Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey “Tom” Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his roles in Splash, Big, Turner & Hooch, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, You’ve Got Mail, The Green Mile, the Toy Story Franchise, Cast Away, The Da Vinci Code, Captain Phillips,… read more
No actor is as versatile as Tom Hanks. He puts in by far the most time studying and learning the person he is portraying and the movie. Like in Cast Away, he stayed on the island by himself to figure out how he would eat and live in those conditions. Everything you saw him do in that movie, he learned while he stranded himself on the island. And to lose the weight that he did and to gain it back, that’s pure dedication.
I don’t know any other actor that could have done Forrest Gump any better than he did. In the movie Big, forget about it – no one could have acted like a child like he did. There have been thousands of movies that are similar where they switch places with another person, and no one nails it like Tom Hanks did in Big.
2 Robert De Niro
Robert Anthony De Niro Jr. (born August 17, 1943) is an American actor and producer. He is particularly known for his nine collaborations with filmmaker Martin Scorsese, and is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen.
To be honest, a lot of old-time actors are not in the top 20, except for De Niro, Pacino, and Brando. I have been watching lots of movies and looked at this list, and I wondered why about 90% of the entire list is absolutely wrong. I couldn’t find any of the OG actors.
Here is a list of actors that are very underappreciated in my opinion: Orson Welles, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Laurence Olivier, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, Robert Duvall, Charlie Chaplin, Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood, Sidney Poitier, Sean Connery, Alan Rickman, James Earl Jones, Clark Gable, Peter Sellers, Anthony Perkins, Anthony Hopkins, and Gregory Peck, just to name a few.
Why did people even put Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio or even Tom Hanks on the same level or even above the level of actors like De Niro? I just wanted to give a quick rant about why actors from back then are better than actors today and how messed up the world is right now. Anyway… back to why I chose De Niro. De Niro has had many stellar and almost unmatched performances, such as in The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, The Deer Hunter, GoodFellas, Heat, and The Untouchables. If you don’t believe me, watch those movies. Need I say more?
3 Jack Nicholson
John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, who has performed for over 60 years. Nicholson is known for playing a wide range of starring or supporting roles, including satirical comedy, romance and dark portrayals of antiheroes and psychopathic characters. In many of his films, he has played the “eternal outsider, the sardonic drifter,” someone who rebels against the social structure.
4 Johnny Depp
John Christopher “Johnny” Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer, and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor.
His role in a movie is often rather big. His character is often on the “loopy side” and his character being in a darker state of mind, etc.
5 Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. Known for his work in biopics and period films, he is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. As of 2019, his films have grossed over $7.2 billion worldwide, and he has been placed eight times in annual rankings of the world’s highest-paid actors.
Born in Los Angeles, DiCaprio began his career in the late 1980s by appearing in television commercials. In the early 1990s, he had recurring roles in various television shows, such as the sitcom Parenthood, and had his first major film part as author Tobias Wolff in This Boy’s Life (1993). At age 19, he received critical acclaim and his first Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for his performance as a developmentally disabled boy in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). He achieved international stardom with the star-crossed romances Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997). After the latter became the highest-grossing film at the time, he reduced his workload for a few years. In an attempt to shed his image of a romantic hero, DiCaprio sought roles in other genres, including crime drama in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002); the latter marked the first of his many successful collaborations with director Martin Scorsese.
DiCaprio portrayed Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004) and received acclaim for his performances in the political thriller Blood Diamond (2006), the crime drama The Departed (2006), and the romantic drama Revolutionary Road (2008). In the following decade, DiCaprio starred in several high-profile directors’ projects, including the science fiction thriller Inception (2010), the western Django Unchained (2012), the biopic The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), the survival drama The Revenant (2015), for which he won an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and the comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), all of which were critical and commercial successes.
DiCaprio is the founder of Appian Way Productions, a production company that has produced some of his films and the documentary series Greensburg (2008–2010), and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting environmental awareness. He regularly supports charitable causes and has produced several documentaries on the environment. In 2005, he was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts, and in 2016, he appeared in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
6 Al Pacino
Alfredo James “Al” (April 25, 1940) Pacino is an American actor and filmmaker. Pacino has had a career spanning more than five decades, during which time he has received numerous accolades and honors.
7 Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American actor, film director, and activist. He is credited with bringing a gripping realism to film acting, and is often cited as one of the greatest and most influential actors of all time. He died on July 1, 2004 at the age of 80.
8 Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, director and narrator. He has appeared in a range of film genres portraying character roles and is particularly known for his distinctive deep voice. Freeman won an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Supporting Actor with Million Dollar Baby (2004), and he has received Oscar nominations for his performances in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus.
9 Daniel Day-Lewis
Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is an English actor. He holds both British and Irish citizenship. He has won 3 Academy Awards for Best Actor for My Left Foot, There Will be Blood, and Lincoln.
10 Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American actor and film producer. He achieved prominence and critical acclaim in the early 1990s with films such as Jungle Fever, Patriot Games, Amos & Andrew, True Romance, Jurassic Park and his collaborations with director Quentin Tarantino including Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Django Unchained & The Hateful Eight.