The sons in those movies do most of the talking, but Morgan gives eloquent expression to experiences that lie outside the main story even as they ground it in a larger history. One of my favorite examples is in Claude Chabrols Comedy of Power (2007), in which she plays a magistrate rooting out corruption in Frances political and business elite and taking on a powerfully entrenched old-boy network. She was like, I cant sing. Juan is a drug dealer, a figure of community destruction and implicit violence. There is so much pain and pride in that performance, which somehow measures the weight of American racism on a single persons body and soul, without turning that person into a symbol of anything. In Still Life (2008), Zhao plays Shen Hong, whos looking for her husband in an ancient town thats going to be flooded for a controversial dam. As a death row prisoner in Just Mercy, he is a notably undramatic presence, a quiet man haunted by remorse, helplessness and fear whose plight encapsulates the films humanist argument. They dont merely create a story about a womans feelings and being as she falls in love; they create a landscape of emotions, the texture and shape of a sensibility. Clooney Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actress who rose to fame after her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999), playing the title role in the "Lara Croft" blockbuster movies, as well as Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010) and Maleficent (2014). In a lengthy career working with a whos who of auteurs, Deneuve has stood for a certain kind of elegant Frenchwoman whether shes playing an ordinary wife, a down-on-her-luck bistro owner or even an Iranian mother. The first time I met Catherine Deneuve was like meeting God in person. In Hongs minimalist canon, life is condensed in everyday moments, in conversations and the way bodies lean toward one another. He cares about other peoples performances and about helping them by being available in whatever he is doing. Its one that Julianne Moore has both explored and exploded, in The Hours (2002) and especially in her collaborations with Todd Haynes like Far From Heaven (2002). Rent or buy Spy and Can You Ever Forgive Me? on most major platforms. IMAGES25: IFC Films; 24: Kino Lorber; 23: A24; 22: Larry Horricks/20th Century Fox; 21: Warner Bros. (Dancer in the Dark); Bac Films (A Christmas Tale); Focus Features (8 Women); Mandarin Films (Potiche); 20: Warner Bros. (Just Mercy); Steve Dietl/Netflix (Mudbound); 19: Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, via Photofest; 18: Lily Gavin/CBS Films; 17: Neon; 16: Amazon Studios/Magnolia Pictures; 15: Matt Kennedy/Marvel, Disney; Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.; Ron Koeberer/Weinstein Company; 14: Alison Rosa/CBS Films; 13: Magnolia Pictures (Julia); Alessio Bolzoni/Amazon Studios (Suspiria); Warner Bros. (Michael Clayton); Kimberly French/Netflix (Okja); 12: Anne Joyce/Weinstein Company (The Immigrant); Anne Joyce/Columbia Pictures (We Own the Night); Barry Wetcher/Miramax Films (The Yards); 11: Focus Features, via Photofest; 10: Merrick Morton/A24; Merie Wallace/A24; 9: Paramount Pictures; 8: Cohen Media Group; 7: Gianni Fiorito/Music Box Films, MPI Media Group; 6: Magnolia Pictures (The Host); CJ Entertainment (Memories of Murder); Neon (Parasite); 5: Anne Marie Fox/Millennium Entertainment; 4: David Lee/Lionsgate; 3: Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Vantage; 2: Kino International; 1: Paramount Pictures (Flight); Robert Zuckerman/Warner Brothers (Training Day); Rico Torres/Columbia Pictures (The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3); Scott Garfield/Columbia Pictures (The Equalizer)Design by Gabriel Gianordoli.Produced by Alicia DeSantis, Stephanie Goodman, Jolie Ruben and Josephine Sedgwick. Gloria starts an affair with a man. I did, too. With lacerating wit her weird smiles mock the audiences pieties she turns the mystery of another person into a thriller. Michael B. Jordan has played lawyers, athletes and superheroes, but even before his range became clear, the director Ryan Coogler wanted to work with him. It goes badly, they break up. Washington is sensational as a bad detective: Hes loose, sexy, frightening but so much bigger than life that he shrinks the movie. The best and most popular Actors and Actresses of the 2000s, Actor | Day-Lewiss art is one of osmosis between him and his directors. Johnny Depp Actor | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street John DARGIS Like all stars, Washingtons acting feels inextricable with his charisma, a combination thats seductive but can overwhelm movies, like Antoine Fuquas violent potboiler Training Day (2001). Braga fits seamlessly into the director Kleber Mendona Filhos wonderful, unfussy realism. About Neo. It can be terrifying to witness, but genius often is. Servillo has been the central avatar in Sorrentinos excavation of the corruption and hypocrisy but also the improbable glory and absurd resilience of modern Italy. Some years, the movies came and went almost without notice. Actors choose roles for all sorts of reasons age, schedule, taste, comfort, pay and race matters, always. Ali is graceful, witty and self-aware while Green Book is clumsy, jokey and blind to its own insensitivities. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an A tall, strikingly attractive blue-eyed natural blonde, Cameron Diaz was born in 1972 in San Diego, the daughter of a Cuban-American father and a German mother. 1. There is this scene when I come home and my mom starts yelling at me: You know what they do with young girls in Iran? But ask yourself: have you ever been disappointed when he showed up in a movie? MANOHLA DARGIS Ali first got my attention in the Netflix series House of Cards. He played Remy Danton, a Washington lawyer whose knowing little smile could flicker like a warning, signaling the danger in his world. WebBest Actor's of 2000s (2000-2010) by gjrb01 | created - 28 Aug 2011 | updated - 28 Aug 2011 | Public These list are composed of great actors in our recent memory associated with I later learned that he was an actor who had been active in the Daehak-ro theater scene for a long time. Interview by Kathryn Shattuck. Huppert is a virtuoso at that kind of ambiguity, at scrambling the usual codes about feminine vulnerability and feminist self-assertion, at defying assumptions about the sources of a womans toughness and fragility. He listens, he chews sunflower seeds, he plays a few chords on an old pipe organ, and after a few minutes in his presence you understand exactly what you need to know. One of my favorite scenes is where hes talking to the young Dr. Rey, who is seeing him after hes cut his ear off and he is guaranteeing him that hes going to get to paint when hes in the institution. SCOTT Maybe one measure of his mightiness is how consistently hes better than the movies hes in. One reason she lifts her characters out of stereotype is that she plays with codes of realism, whether shes delivering a naturalistic performance (Still Alice, the 2014 melodrama about a professor with Alzheimers) or a hyperbolic one (David Cronenbergs 2015 satire Maps to the Stars, where shes a Hollywood hyena). A. O. SCOTT The unhappy American housewife smiling to keep up appearances in the face of domestic tragedy and inner turmoil is a durable movie archetype. Hes also one of the supreme regular-guy actors. Essential to the subversive fun of Spy is how it deploys genre conventions to showcase McCarthys talents while also blowing up stereotypes. That interaction is extraordinary, what Willem does there. Along with his best friend (played by Diego Luna), Julio tumbles through life heedlessly until he doesnt. But what goes on in his face in his response to what the young doctor is saying to him and also in response to whatever other thoughts seem to be traveling through his mind at that time is a landscape of events and an interior life like foam coming to the top of a vanilla egg cream. Studi vaulted into cinematic consciousness as the vengeful Huron warrior in Michael Manns epic The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a character the actor conveys with powerful physicality and intensities of contempt, impatience, resentment, fury. Its a kind of self-authorized rebirth, as if Athena could spring not from her fathers forehead, but her own. Then everything falls apart. MANOHLA DARGIS I just recently rewatched Aquarius (2016) for our ode to Snia Braga. As a toddler, she was already a compulsive performer, re-enacting TV commercials for her family's amusement, but she decided to Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for playing wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films. Top films contributed to this record: Cast Away ($233,632,142 in 2000 ), Saving Private Ryan Its 30 seconds of pure genius. Through some combination of a winning smile, solid work ethic, and good old-fashioned talent, the young actress has gone from Diane Kruger was born Diane Heidkrger in Algermissen, near Hildesheim, Germany, to Maria-Theresa, a bank employee, and Hans-Heinrich Heidkrger, a computer specialist. She goes big and small, veers from monstrous to mousy, and alternately hides her characters feelings and lets them run amok. It was more of a casual conversation than an audition, but I could tell that he had the makings of a juggernaut. Keanu's father was born in Hawaii, of British, Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and producer. Data Table: Suicide Rates Source: CDC Vital Statistics Learn more about suicide rates by state. His mother's family, originally surnamed "Fraga", was entirely Portuguese, while his father was of mostly English ancestry. Tell us what you think about this feature. But what Servillo is doing is more than just superior sketch-comedy satire. I love that she forces me to look even when I dont want to. The comments section is closed. He had that dimensionality to him. His well-publicized preparations for his roles and his insistence on staying in character during production have become legendary, the stuff of excited headlines and fan fetishism. He can do Shakespeare and August Wilson, villainy or action heroism. Born in Cupertino, California, Eckhart moved to the United Kingdom at an early age, when his father relocated the family. She goes big and small, veers from monstrous to mousy. In Flight, his magnetism deepens his characters tragedy; it gives his walk swagger yet its also part of his crumbling facade. Her suffering is relentless, but her stoicism makes it almost comical at times, as if she were simultaneously the heroine of an old Hollywood melodrama and the protagonist of a Samuel Beckett play. Like the exotic century plant, an agave that blooms spectacularly only once, Day-Lewis knows both how to tease us and put on a show. That helps make her a terrific villain, whether shes playing a demon, a queen or a corporate lawyer. You dont always know that right away, but weve all experienced it now over time. In this outlandish, often perversely funny drama set in Korea in the 1930s, she plays a Japanese noble whos saved from her deviant uncle by her wiles and by another woman. MANOHLA DARGIS Fearless and mesmerizing, sometimes scary, sometimes freakish, Isabelle Huppert has taken on an astonishment of roles over her career, moving effortlessly from tears to shrieks, from the straightest stories to the most gloriously unhinged. Just look at one strand of her career: her work with Luca Guadagnino, a filmmaker who shares her delight in self-reinvention. Shes one of the best interpreters of material that Ive had the opportunity to collaborate with. But he has been curiously easy to underestimate. In mainstream cinema, realism is an actors coin in trade, an aesthetic choice that helps turn artifice into something like life. In their heartbreak, humiliation and longing, Frank and Cathy have no consolation to offer each other. This is because as much as she captures the emotional weather and specific body language of, say, a 16th-century Scottish queen or a 21st-century California teenager, what she conveys even more vividly is the way those people think, the way it feels to be inside their heads. Amid the extensive run of excellent work the coaches and cops, the gangsters and lawyers there are a few monuments that show this towering talent in full. You cant take your eyes off her. Before Mike was an actor, he was an athlete, back in elementary school and high school. She is not loud, she does not make gestures. All that labor and those books are a reminder that acting is also a job, not magic, even when an actors performance seems or, rather, feels alchemical. Several years later, he began his acting career by performing in school plays, before moving to Australia for his high school senior British actor Clive Owen is one of a handful of stars who, though he is best known for his art house films, can handle more mainstream films with equal measures of grace and skill. He was also nominated for playing van Gogh in Julian Schnabels biopic, At Eternitys Gate (2018). And while there are certainly stars in the mix and even a smattering of Oscar winners, there are also character actors and chameleons, action heroes and art-house darlings. The American Latino Experience: 20 Essential Films Since 2000, The 20 Best TV Dramas Since The Sopranos. Tell me what to do and I will do it. She didnt do it in front of other people. When I was with her in the play [Fences] even in rehearsal it was like, Oh, OK, shes a powerhouse. She has a big scene when she finally unloads on Troy; about the third week of rehearsal she showed where she was going. Moore could have placed Cathys anguish in quotation marks, evoking the suffering divas of 50s cinema while winking at a modern audience contemplating the bad old days from a safe aesthetic distance. Truth Korean Drama - 2000, 16 episodes 2. Sometimes, though, as in Ex Machina, he uses that intimacy for something insinuating, sinister. Hes doing a lot of stuff behind the camera now. Of course. Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best things thats ever happened to me. In Suspiria (2018) she executed one of her many self-doublings, appearing as a member of a balletomaniac coven of witches and also as an elderly male Holocaust survivor. A savagely critical stand-in for todays masters of the digital universe, Nathan could easily have dominated the movie. Hes one of our most credible action heroes, and also one of our most resourceful and inventive character actors. Not all actors have this thing, when you immediately care about somebody right offhand and that triggers an empathetic reaction. Actor | Inception. In Last Black Man he appears in a handful of scenes and utters just a few lines, but everything that movie is about the pleasures and disappointments of life at the margins of an idiosyncratic, rapidly changing city is written in his face. He cares about other peoples performances. One of the delights of movie-watching in the past decade has been encountering him in unexpected guises. Her mother, Helga Bullock (ne Helga Mathilde Meyer), was a German opera singer. For Kidman, a miniaturist with a lapidary touch, creating that realism sometimes involves obscuring the beauty (for the role, not awards) that has long defined her. Whether Ive done four movies with him or 40, I know I will unearth a new character. Stream or rent the John Wick movies and other Reeves titles on major platforms. Toni Servillo is probably best known to American audiences for The Great Beauty (2013), Paolo Sorrentinos Oscar-winning tour of the decadent ways of the modern Roman cultural elite. Not much happens in ordinary movie terms, yet everything happens because Gloria loves and is loved in turn. Malcolm X is one, and Troy Maxson in Fences (2016) is another. I trust her completely. And it wasnt about just looking like him. This time while viewing the movie, though partly prompted by, ahem, a chapter title called Claras Hair I noticed how Braga kept rearranging her opulent curtain of hair. You want to lay down the parameters of what it is you have in mind, and then surround yourself with people who will make it all more beautiful. These are actual people! Joaquin was absolutely fantastic at that. Leonardo DiCaprio Rated - Custom 8.2 2850 Rated 3. After Llewyn Davis, I associated Isaac with soulful defeat, with an undercurrent of grudging resentment. Its pretentious twaddle that Kidman graces with delicacy and pinpricks of emotion. Im still eager to see what he will bring to a role. But shes an artist of extremes, and she and Cronenberg have fun playing with her gargoyle faces. A. O. SCOTT Lee Israel is funny. Lets just say that I wasnt always willing to say, Yeah, thats interesting, but lets try this. I was more into, Joaq, what are you doing? Especially to the Korean audience, Song projects the quality of the typical Korean working man, a neighbor or friend you might encounter in your neighborhood. The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century So Far. Doing a lot with a little has been a constant in Studis movie career, which includes signifying roles in The New World (2005) and Avatar (2009). But Moore and the director Sebastin Lelio transcend obviousness. Interview by Candice Frederick. He is best known for his long-running role as Wolverine in the X-Men film American actor Mark Wahlberg is one of a handful of respected entertainers who successfully made the transition from teen pop idol to acclaimed actor. That 2002 movie is a terrifying tour-de force of lust, cruelty, masochism and musicianship. These transgressions arent symmetrical or intersectional. If you live in France, Catherine Deneuve is the symbol. Peck began his career as a child actor in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and MANOHLA DARGIS When actors make a profound first impression, they sometimes get bound up with your ideas about what they can do. 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far) Chameleons or beauties, star turns or character roles these are the performers who have outshone all others on This was followed by a handful of other high-profile vehicles, most notably The Hours (2002), in which she played Virginia Woolf (cue the schnoz) and snared her an Oscar. Hes basically sitting at a table and theres not a whole hell of a lot of room for movement. Rent or buy Fences on major streaming platforms. That was irrelevant to me. Owen is typically cast as characters whose primary traits are a balance of physical strength, intellect, conflicting Jake Gyllenhaal was born on December 19, 1980 in Los Angeles, California as Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal, the son of producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the younger brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. A. O. SCOTT Mahershala Ali has one of the great faces in modern movies those sculpted cheekbones, that high, contemplative brow, those eyes tinged with melancholy. Yet while their actions generally remain the same, as does the overall arc of the evening, enough has changed how they look at each other, the inflections in their voices to turn this second encounter into something different. Funnier and scarier. Once again, Studi delivers a supporting turn that complements the leading performance his characters indifference to the escorts rage is a wall that cant be breached and helps equalize the storys balance. That movie is what Pauline Kael called a come-dressed-as-the-sick-soul-of-Europe party, starring Servillo, playing a writer of slim accomplishment and large reputation, as the master of revels. It was a part of him that wasnt a big reach. In Moonlight, Ali creates a titanic character whose force, even after he disappears from the movie, continues to resonate. They were clocking eight-hour shifts, crammed into a small vessel with very poor visibility, according to the BBC. Shes a star, a character actor, a performance artist, an extraterrestrial, a trickster. The title character, Erika Kohut, becomes obsessed with a student, and Huppert performs her descent into madness with icy precision and operatic intensity. Day-Lewis is one of the most revered actors of the past half-century, a reputation based on his dazzling filmography and burnished by an aura of greatness that has grown to near-mystical proportions. Id love to meet him. And I did. He has the ability to bring life and rawness to every moment. Matt has an older brother, Kyle, a sculptor. His father, James Chester Reynolds, was a food wholesaler, and his mother, Tamara Lee "Tammy" (Stewart), worked as a retail-store saleswoman. I bring it up only because the kind of mystery you refer to the volatile compound of wit, charm and will dominates that movie, which Huppert makes more intriguing than it has any right to be. His bull riding days over, he now works on the ground as a bullfighter, helping protect fallen riders. CNN The sinking of a packed migrant boat off the coast of Greece may be the worst tragedy ever in the Mediterranean sea, according to the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson. [For At Eternitys Gate] I needed somebody that would have the depth of character to play van Gogh. Much depends on that vision. As the chalk to Winona Ryders cheese in Victor Levins abrasive anti-rom-com Destination Wedding (2018). No movie has served her better than Spy (2015) in which she plays Susan, a timid C.I.A. Official list of the Top 25 BEST Actors in the past 15 Years. In Jias movies, people do a whole lot of walking and no one has clocked more miles than Zhao, often in real time. Crowe's recent ancestry includes Welsh (where his paternal grandfather was born, in Wrexham), Antonio Banderas, one of Spain's most famous faces, was a soccer player until breaking his foot at the age of fourteen; he is now an international movie star known for playing Zorro in the eponymous movie series.He was born Jos Antonio Domnguez Banderas on August 10, 1960, in Mlaga, Andalusia, Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.