The Great Actors Thread

[Sturgeon]

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Does Brad Pitt count?

He has been in some really great movies, Seven, Fight Club, Inglorious Bastards, etc, I think he does a good job in them.

Of course I have pretty low standards. 

[Sturgeon]

Brad Pitt is very capable, but he's been typecast too much.

[Donward]

I thought this was the GREAT actors thread?

 

 

Back in the days when motion picture actors were able to deliver their lines and hold an emotion for ten seconds, twenty seconds or up to a minute or more in a single take.

 

Also, back in the days when those same said great actors would be mocked in cartoons with firearms and violence...

 

http://youtu.be/PPlCVWG-Be0

[Sturgeon]

The best actors remain to this day classically-trained stage actors, so you're absolutely right, Don.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

So would James Stewart make the cut?

[Donward]

I would say yes. Very much so.

 

Jimmy Stewart was fortunate in that he drew the attention of several very notable directors throughout his career, casting him the archetypal role of the American Everyman who finds himself in an unusual occasion and overcomes it while still maintaining the morality one would expect from small town American from the Midwest. This character worked with Frank Capra in Mister Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. It worked with Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Rear Window. His collaborations with Western director Alfred Mann allowed him to display a little more violence such as Winchester 73 but most of the films he is Jimmy Stewart. And there's nothing wrong with it.

 

The mark of a great actor would be if he could carry a role and a movie even if it is a pedestrian outing and Stewart was able to achieve this making vehicles like Strategic Air Command, Carbine Williams, The Cheyenne Country Club or even Airport '77 watchable for his performance alone.

[Walter_Sobchak]

Let us all look back at the career of the late great Leonard Nimoy.