Best Actors Of All Time: A blog that compiles an extensive list of actors arranged in order of importance.
The blog is based on the principle that some actors are clearly more important than others, and that it is possible to rank them in a way that gives you a definitive list. This list will never be complete (as new actors are discovered all the time), but will hopefully give you the best overview of acting possible. It will be updated regularly as new information becomes available, and your input is welcome.
The criteria for ranking actors are as follows:
1) How good they are at acting. A common misconception among people who know nothing about acting is that acting well is all about looking good or being convincing when pretending to be someone else. While these things do help, a truly great actor has a deep understanding of the craft and genuine passion for their chosen career. They have studied the art of acting extensively, have worked with respected directors, have made many films and/or plays, and can make any role their own.
Best Actors of All Time is a blog that compiles an extensive list of actors arranged in order of importance. The list is based on the views, opinions, and subjective experience of one individual and is therefore not factual. It’s just a fun project that may or may not generate discussion.
The primary goal of this blog is to engage with fellow film fans and opinion sharers. Comments are very encouraged and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the list!
I will be posting a new actor every day for the next 1000 days. If you would like to contribute to the project, please contact me and let’s discuss!
Thank you for visiting Best Actors of All Time!
For the last twenty-five years, I have been compiling a list of the best actors of all time. The blog was started in late 1994 as a way for me to organize my thoughts on the subject.
The list is arranged chronologically from oldest to youngest. “Oldest” is defined by birth date, while “youngest” is defined by when they first started acting professionally. It took me several years to put together some guidelines for determining the order of this list, but I finally settled on the following:
1. How good a performer the actor was
2. How many roles they have played
3. Their awards and nominations
4. Their versatility
5. Their movie choices
6. Their filmography
7. How many movies they have starred in
8. Their impact on the industry
9. Other factors such as age and gender are considered as well
It is widely believed that the best actors come from the United Kingdom. This list provides a guide to the greatest actors of all time and includes some of the most talented and famous actors in film history.
1. Tom Cruise
2. Daniel Day-Lewis
3. Leonardo DiCaprio
4. Denzel Washington
5. Morgan Freeman
6. Sean Connery
7. John Travolta
8. Anthony Hopkins
9. Robert De Niro
10. Al Pacino
In our list of the 100 Greatest Actors, Tom Hanks appears at No. 64 and Meryl Streep at No. 1. Inevitably, that’s going to cause some consternation among the more fervent Hanks fans out there, but we don’t make the rankings; we just report them. The rankings churned out by our algorithm are based on an exhaustive analysis of a wide variety of data points from IMDb, Wikipedia, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes, as well as the opinions of film critics and voters from around the world. But how do you weigh these diverse sources against each other? How do you turn a critic’s opinion into something as concrete and indisputable as a box-office number?
Why is Meryl Streep better than Robert De Niro? Or Leonardo DiCaprio better than Daniel Day-Lewis? It’s actually pretty simple: Our algorithm runs on the principle that actors are best judged by their body of work. And when you look at her movies—The Devil Wears Prada, Sophie’s Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer—in terms of their critical and commercial success, Streep handily beats De Niro (The Deer Hunter) and DiCaprio (Titanic).
Whether it is a measure of acting ability or not, actors have been given a number of awards over the years, including Oscars, Golden Globes and Baftas.
But what do these gongs actually tell us? The answer, according to some experts, is not much. That’s because they were created by the film industry to reward its own – not as a means of creating a list of the greatest actors or actresses of all time.
Awards ceremonies are largely pointless affairs, full of celebrities who congratulate each other for being so good at their jobs.
That’s not to say there aren’t some great performances scattered throughout the many lists of winners from yesteryear – there are plenty. But what we’re more interested in is which actors have stood the test of time and appeared in great films time and again.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled our own list of the greatest actors ever based on their body of work (and we’re not talking about physical bodies). It’s an exhaustive list that doesn’t take into account popularity or celebrity status – just raw talent.
Humphrey Bogart
Born: Dec. 25, 1899 in New York City, New York Died: January 14, 1957 (age 57) in Hollywood, California
Best known for: His role as Rick Blaine in the film Casablanca
Humphrey Bogart was a leading American motion picture actor during the 1940s and 1950s. He won an Academy Award in 1951 for his performance as Charlie Allnut in The African Queen. Bogart’s other famous roles included Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep.
