Every month, our contributors submit lists of ten films fitting certain topics. Each month, we feature an alphabetical list of films along with commentary explaining our selections. There will also be an itemized list at the end of each of our individual selections.

Last month, we took a look at our favorite female lead performances. Now, we’re taking a glimpse at the men’s side of the equation. Of the forty submissions made by our four contributors, only one single performance appears on more than one list: Henry Fonda’s work in The Grapes of Wrath. Beyond that, only two actors are cited twice each. Jack Nicholson shows up for both Five Easy Pieces and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Daniel Day-Lewis makes the cut for both My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood.

After the break, dig into our setups and follow that by reading about each film.

The Introductions

Wesley Lovell: There are many iconic performances in cinema history, but many of them are so iconic that they seem stale. As such, many of the performances I considered, but tossed are so commonly cited that they made me feel like I wanted to do a fresher list. Although there are some performances that are greater than the ones I’ve cited, these are among my all-time favorite lead performances.
Peter J. Patrick: As with the actresses, ten seems like an insignificant number when it comes to acknowledging single performances by leading actors. I could just as easily list career-high performance by such brilliant actors as Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Robert De Niro, Alec Guinness, Tom Hanks, Charles Laughton, Fredric March, Peter O’Toole, and Al Pacino, or the more recent performances of Heath Ledger and Casey Affleck, but the performances by the ten I have listed are among the most unforgettable of all time. They range the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s and are all watchable over and over.
Tripp Burton: I sometimes learn a lot about my own tastes when making these lists, and what I found so fascinating as I started whittling these names down was how much I was savoring the quiet over the loud. Most of these performances are the most powerful in what they don’t do, although they also all have moments that explode off the screen. Of course, this list is too short — not enough comedic work, not enough foreign work, but this is what is speaking to me the most right now. Next month, it might be a completely different list.
Thomas LaTourrette: Only one of these men won Oscars for these performances, and two were not even nominated for them, but these ten men commanded the screen in these performances. Like with the top performances by a lead actress, the more serious roles dominate. Five of the performances date back to the 1950s, but two are from the last decade, so there is a wide range of styles included. They are all parts that have stayed with me from when I first saw them.

Casey Affleck – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – In a film dominated by big personalities, there is a silent posturing that Casey Affleck does for most of Andrew Dominick’s epic Western that allows him to almost fade into the back of the screen. But he is always there, present and active, taking in everything around him and morphing from a star-struck innocent to titular assassin. Affleck is an actor who excels at letting you watch him think, and here his gears are constantly shifting and it makes what he is thinking about heartbreaking.

Humphrey Bogart – The African Queen (1951)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – Bogart had fun with the part of Charlie Allnut, a drunk boat captain in German East Africa. He gets to be irascible, tough, and ultimately heroic. He does not initially want to help the missionary played by Katharine Hepburn, but ultimately comes to respect her, even if she does pour out his liquor. Together they survive rapids, an attack by Germans, a damaged boat, and being mired in the mud. They decide to jury-rig a torpedo to take out a German gunboat, which leads to their capture. Bogart nobly tries to save Hepburn, but both are sentenced to be hanged. He asks for the captain to marry them before that happens, in a memorable scene. It may not be the deepest character he played, but it definitely is one of the most fun ones.

Kenneth Branagh – Henry V (1989)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – Branagh was only 29 when he made his triumphant directorial debut with Henry V. He surrounded himself with a lot of British acting royalty, but it was his stunning performance as the young king that anchored the film. When he gives the St. Crispin’s Day speech exhorting his men to battle against the much larger French army, I was stirred and ready to join the battle. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” has never resonated more for me. He was deservedly nominated as both actor and director for this masterful piece of work.

Marlon Brando – A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – Of the legendary stage performances that have been lost to time passing, only Marlon Brando’s Stanley Kowalski is captured on film in a way that captures every speck of brilliance. Brando, in only his second film, already knows how to tweak his performance to make it work on a big screen as opposed to a big stage. He explodes off the screen with a full-on masculine energy — screaming Stella at the foot of the stairs, or his final, brutal encounter with his sister-in-law Blanche — and those moments are calibrated perfectly. He also finds the impossible balance in Stanley, giving him a charm and street-wise intelligence that underpins every brutish action he takes. This is a lived-in performance that could only come from years of honing it on stage before capturing it for eternity. It changed movie acting for a reason, and Brando would never quite be able to equal it again.

Jim Carrey – The Truman Show (1998)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – If you look at Jim Carrey’s In Living Color days or at his 90s/00s work, it might be easy to get the impression that he was just a lazy comedian who would do anything to get a laugh. Yet, mixed in with all of these zany, insane performances are a small list of great, more serious works. TV’s Doing Time on Maple Drive was his best, but he also performed well in films like Man on the Moon, The Majestic, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but above all of these stood a marvelous piece of acting. In The Truman Show, Carrey toned down his exuberance to deliver a somber, understated, and still funny performance as a man who discovers that the world around him is little more than an elaborate reality show. The film was a marvel itself, but would have been nothing without his charming, deft performance.

Daniel Day-Lewis – My Left Foot (1989)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Actors playing real-life characters are thought to have a leg up when it comes to winning awards for their performances, and actors playing handicapped real-life characters are thought to have a double advantage. That may be true to some extent, but you would have to look far and wide to find a richer, more compelling performance in such a role than the one Day-Lewis gave as Christy Brown, the cantankerous Irish writer born with cerebral palsy who learns to write with his only controllable limb, his left foot. Kudos also to Hugh O’Conor as the young Christy Brown with whom Day-Lewis shares screen time.

Daniel Day-Lewis – There Will Be Blood (2007)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – One of this generation’s greatest actors, Daniel Day-Lewis has turned out iconic work in a number of films throughout his career from the 80s to present. The best of all of these was his work on There Will Be Blood, a tinder box of explosive power. Paired with the oily nature of his crude magnate and you have a performance of fiery intensity that eclipses his fine work in films like Gangs of New York, Lincoln, and My Left Foot.

Robert Donat – Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Beloved school teachers are a dime a dozen in movie history, but few, if any, have had the lasting power to move audiences at first or 100th viewing as deeply as Donat does in his most assured role. Told in flashbacks as the 82-year-old Mr. Chipping (Chips for short) looks back on his life, we gain a keen perception of the life of the shy schoolmaster, who empowered by his brief, but unforgettable marriage to a charming woman, grows in generosity and brilliance as his life takes many turns in his long academic career, continuing even after his official retirement. The character is unforgettable, and so is the actor playing him.

Michael Fassbender – Shame (2011)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – This small film was shunned by American audiences and the Academy thanks to its graphic sexual content. Yet, among the films released that year, it was one of the most human and compelling dramas. Michael Fassbender channeled all of his best work into this stirring performance about a sex addict forced to confront his demons in a visceral and painful fashion. It was a jarring, fearless performance that came to define the type of work that Fassbender would be doing in more visible films. I was initially hesitant to include such a recent performance on the list, but the entire act continues to haunt to this day. That’s why it made the final ten.

Colin Firth – A Single Man (2009)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – He may have won the Oscar the following year for The King’s Speech, but this is the performance of Firth’s that I will most remember. Playing a depressed English professor living in Los Angeles, Firth turns in a heartfelt performance of a man who is planning his death. Dreams, flashbacks, and chance encounters fill his day. He meets up with a student who seems to show more of an interest in him than he expects. It seems like he might have found a reason to live, before suffering a heart attack. It is a gentle but deeply moving performance deserving of the Oscar nomination and the BAFTA award he won.

Henry Fonda – The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Fonda’s portrayal of Tom Joad, the third-generation Oklahoma farmer who, along with his family, loses their home due to foreclosure, was an Everyman for the Great Depression. Forced to endure the travails of the homeless looking for work where there were more men than needed for every job, he and his family face an uncertain future. John Steinbeck’s novel came as close to being the archetypal Great American Novel as any and John Ford’s film came as close to being the archetypal Great American Film thanks in no small measure to Fonda’s towering performance, backed by the equally brilliant work of Jane Darwell and John Carradine.

Commentary by Tripp Burton – By the time you get to the end of John Ford’s adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, and Henry Fonda delivers one of the great movie monologues promising to “be there,” he has earned every ounce of power that the monologue gives. Less a movie star glowing off the screen and more of a movie migrant trudging through the film, Henry Fonda gives one of the most natural and unassuming performances in a major Hollywood film. He is angry, caring, gentle, feisty, and determined, all without ever being flashy or drawing attention to himself.

Jake Gyllenhaal – Nightcrawler (2014)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – Gyllenhaal has always been an actor that throws himself into physically demanding roles, being able to change himself for what the role demands. That was never more apparent than in the weight loss he did for Nightcrawler. He made himself suitably creepy as the wannabe newsman, giving himself pep talks while he photographed violent crimes. As he crosses the line of involving himself in his stories, his lack of morals looms larger. He has never been better and it is a pity that he did not receive an Oscar nomination for his work here.

Gene Hackman – The Conversation (1974)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – Gene Hackman has one of the great voices in cinema history, a vibrating bass that he could use to great effect, whether in one of his great commanding performances or as one of a series of wilting losers he excelled at. His best performance has little use for his voice, however, because it is almost completely a silent performance. His Harry Caul is a listener, and Hackman spends most of the film letting others do the talking. His face, though, is so engaging and his silent stature so enthralling that he tells more through his body language in this film than most any other actor could in hours of dialogue.

Dustin Hoffman – Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Hoffman’s transformation from the naïve title character in The Graduate two years earlier to the sickly con man “Ratso” Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy was in itself a towering achievement, but even without the stunning discovery of this new aspect of a new star’s talent, this was a remarkable performance. Hoffman has to be both sympathetic and hurtful, frail of health and strong in conviction at the same time, and he pulls it off playing against an equally brilliant Jon Voight as the Texas stud who comes to New York to make it big as a hustler and ends up Hoffman’s only friend and vice versa.

John Hurt – The Elephant Man (1980)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – To exert the sympathy, pain, and complex emotional journey John Hurt manages in The Elephant Man requires an exquisite acting prowess. To do all of that under pounds of makeup, without the use of many of your acting tools, is a Herculean effort. But while the physical appearance of his John Merrick may turn you away, you cannot help but be drawn into him and embrace his damaged soul.

Klaus Kinski – Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – It can be very hard to judge how great an acting performance Klaus Kinski is giving in anything because it is hard to tell where the insanity of his characters begins and where his own wild personality ends. But there have been few cinematic presences as effective or frightening as Kinski at his maddest, and his obsessive conquistador may be the most memorable of all of them. No film has truly exhibited the uninhibited frenzy and chaos as Aguirre, and that has to do a lot with what Kinski brings to the table, exposing himself and his character to the bones and soul of both Aguirre and Kinski and not caring which is which.

Charles Laughton – Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – It was hard to decide whether to write up Laughton for this or for The Private Life of Henry VIII. Both of them are great performances, but I know this one better. Laughton plays a master barrister who is in ill health, but he takes on an intriguing case. With lots of twists and turns, typical for an Agatha Christie story. The plot unfolds, though, with a couple big surprises at the end. Laughton has a field day as the wily barrister, and has a great final line. It is a performance to savor.

Jack Lemmon – Some Like It Hot (1959)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – He may have won his Oscars for other parts, but this will always be the quintessential Lemmon role. As a musician who has to go into hiding and into drag, he has a field day with the possibilities. He spends more time as Daphne in an all female band than he does as Jerry, though he is delightful in both parts. As Daphne, he is wooed by Joe E. Brown, and is hysterical as he starts to fall for the rich old man. Nobody’s perfect, but the performance comes close.

Fredric March – Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – For more than a century, the dual characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have fascinated readers. In the early days of cinema, the film saw frequent adaptations. The first came in 1920 with legendary John Barrymore in the role. The second arrived 11 years later with Frederic March taking on the character. The third showed up just ten years later in the guise of Spencer Tracy. Strangely, the character has seen other adaptations, but no further instances on the big screen of the book itself. Of these three actors, Barrymore was solid and Tracy was a mess, but March stands head-and-shoulders above them both with his charismatic and dark turn as a scientist plagued by an alternate personality after a science experiment goes gravely wrong. It’s not just an iconic take on the character, but through a series of startling takes, the monster transforms before the audience and it’s all thanks to March’s performance that the transformation is so complete.

James Mason – A Star is Born (1954)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – It feels a little sacrilegious to have Mason on this list when I did not have his costar, Judy Garland, on last month’s list of female performances. She was a marvel, but on seeing this film, I was amazed at the acting that Mason turned in as the fading movie star whose fame gets eclipsed by his new wife. He gets to run through a range of emotions from drunk to contrite to loving to bored, and he nails them all. I had always liked him as an actor, but was truly impressed by the depth of feeling he brought to the doomed Norman Maine.

Malcolm McDowell – A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – Stanley Kubrick was a master of atmosphere. His films were a panoply of potent visual elements buoyed by bold, exciting performances. Although one other almost made the list (Jack Nicholson in The Shining), this and another were the ones I settled on. As Beethoven aficionado Alex DeLarge, a young Malcolm McDowell established himself to the public at large as a formidable acting presence. McDowell transitions from violent criminal to horrified captive to the simpering, defenseless coward at the film’s end. It’s a measured, compelling performance yielding tremendous sympathy and helping build the necessary emotional connection that helps the audience connect to the admittedly dark and frequently brutal material.

Ian McKellen – Gods and Monsters (1998)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – Among the screen’s greatest performances, Ian McKellen is responsible for many. While his work in Richard III is a close second, Gods and Monsters proved to be a career-defining role. As the enigmatic Old Hollywood director James Whale, who brought the world the story of Frankenstein and his Bride, long after his career has faded, the film also marked director Bill Condon’s emergence as one of this generations great artists. McKellen brought intense humanity and honesty to the part, reflecting on the past and the present with great fondness in an expansive look at longing and depression in a regressive and oppressive environment.

Ray Milland – The Lost Weekend (1945)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – In Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland takes on the role of Don Birman, a New York writer whose fear of failure causes him to drink. It’s a sobering portrait of alcoholism that Milland carefully plots out in present tense and in flashback, skillfully navigating a performance that lessor actors would have allowed to drift into stereotype. Milland brings a chilling potency to the disease of alcoholism through an often overlooked, but brilliant performance.

Robert Mitchum – The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – Legendary actor Charles Laughton only directed one film. It happens to be one of the most tense and chilling films ever made. Although it is classified as film noir, the film plays more like a horror film thanks to the frightening performance of Robert Mitchum. Mitchum plays Reverand Harry Powell, a preacher who travels from town to town sharing the word of God while punishing sinful women. This serial killer is now hot on the trail of a father’s young children who hold a vast sum of money within a rag doll. As he relentlessly stalks them and their mother (Shelly Winters), his unnerving calling card, a rendition of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arm,” make for an even more terrifying film. Mitchum is every bit the reason the film works as well as it does.

Paul Muni – I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – More than a decade before Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift would change the face of film acting by bringing the method to Hollywood, Paul Muni (who Brando cited as the greatest actor he ever knew) was laying the groundwork with detailed, emotional, honest portrayals in Hollywood movies. His greatest achievement was I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, where his wrongfully convicted fugitive jitters across the screen as a nervous ball of energy. His transition from innocent to criminal, forced by circumstance is heartbreaking to witness. It is a tour-de-force and feels unlike anything else from its era or any other.

Paul Newman – Nobody’s Fool (1994)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Newman, in his last starring role, was close to 70 playing a spry 60-year-old in this remarkable character study in which he plays a ne’er-do-well who learns to face up to his responsibilities as he looks toward retirement from his long-held construction job. Set in small-town Bath, N.Y., Newman’s universe is small, but strangely endearing as he interfaces with his boss (Bruce Willis), the boss’s wife (Melanie Griffith), his elderly landlady (Jessica Tandy), and his estranged son (Dylan Walsh) and grandson (Alexander Goodwin) among the denizens of the town. Newman seems to be having more fun here than in any other film he ever made.

Jack Nicholson – Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Nicholson had been around since the mid-1950s without generating much heat until his Oscar-nominated supporting turn in 1969’s Easy Rider made everyone sit up and take notice. With his first starring role in Five Easy Pieces, he reinvigorated not only his career, but the direction movies would take in the coming decade. His restless concert pianist-turned-oil rigger and ultimate heel would prove to be the first true role model for actors since the halcyon days of Brando and Dean two decades earlier. You just can’t take your eyes off of him as he breaks the hearts of friends and family alike.

Jack Nicholson – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – There are a few more iconic actors of the 1970s and after than Jack Nicholson. Responsible for countless noteworthy performances, his work as a rebellious inmate at a mental institution is his finest. As Randle McMurphy, Nicholson plays the character with smooth confidence and quietly intensifying mental instability. He’s in nearly every frame and his magnetic personality keeps you entertained. As unlikable and detestable as the character is at times, Nicholson keeps the audience glued to the screen and sympathetic to his cause. It’s the mark of a great actor and this is a truly great performance.

Peter O’Toole – The Lion in Winter (1968)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – O’Toole may have burst on the film scene with his mesmerizing performance as Lawrence of Arabia, but his second turn as Henry II is my favorite performance of his. Sparring with Katharine Hepburn, he turned in a superb performance, and is better than when he first played the same king in Becket. Fighting with his children, mistress, and wife, he exudes strength, virility, and charm. Although Eleanor aggravates him, his love for her does come through. Hepburn deservedly won an Oscar as Eleanor and O’Toole should have won the Oscar that year as well.

Gregory Peck – The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – In only his second film, Peck established his screen persona as a man of impeccable integrity, making it impossible for him to play any type of villain with an iota of believability for the remainder of his lengthy career. His Father Chisholm, a Scottish missionary priest in China, earns the respect of all as he battles local superstition, invading forces, disease, supercilious clergymen, doubting nuns, and two-faced thieves as he builds strong bonds with his Chinese neighbors and the crusading clergymen of other faiths.

Anthony Perkins – Psycho (1960)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – Perkins would be forever overshadowed by this role, but he was pitch perfect as the seemingly innocent and nervous motel innkeeper who is hiding some deep, dark secrets. With boyish good looks and a charming earnestness, he just seems like someone who is nervous around women, except perhaps his adored mother. He is creepy, but mesmerizing. The part may have come to symbolize him, but that would not have happened if he had not been so good playing it.

Sidney Poitier – Lilies of the Field (1963)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Race takes a back seat to simple human dignity in this most accessible of Poitier’s early films in which the color of his skin was not an important factor in the plot. He plays an itinerant handyman who is cajoled into building a chapel for a group of East German nuns who escaped the Communists over the Berlin Wall and have found their “poor man’s Vatican” in the Arizona desert. Poitier is charm personified in this film, whether sparring with the Mother Superior (Lilia Skala), building the chapel, or teaching the nuns to sing the folksy “Amen” in this road movie that doesn’t go anywhere except to the cockles of your heart.

Roy Scheider – All That Jazz (1979)

Commentary by Thomas La Tourrette – As the womanizing, hard partying and driven director/choreographer, Scheider had the part of his life and he ran with it. He was playing a version of Bob Fosse who directed and co-wrote the film. Scheider, with an ever present cigarette dangling from his lips, perfectly captures the manic life of Fosse, and yet it seems so different from anything he did before or after. His intensity anchors the film, and he really should have won the Oscar that year.

Peter Sellers – Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Commentary by Wesley Lovell – Peter Sellers wasn’t the first actor to take on multiple roles in a film, but for Stanley Kubrick’s war comedy, Sellers delivers the greatest of them all. As Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, Sellers gives us the portrait of a wary military officer trapped in an Air Force Base with Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) who believes water fluoridation is a Communist plot to sap Americans of their precious bodily fluids. As President Merkin Muffley, Sellers gives us a weary U.S. president trapped in a war room with American reactionaries who has to have a conversation with the Russians to stave off a nuclear war. As Dr. Strangelove himself, Sellers delivers a fierce performance as an ex-Nazi scientist whose maniacal appreciation of nuclear weapons is almost as terrifying as the stupidity that surrounds him and the president in the war room. Sellers’ three performances are entirely at odds with one another. He plays the lunatic, the straight man, and a strange combination of the two to supremely brilliant success.

Takashi Shimura – Ikiru (1952)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – It has been many years since I last saw Ikiru, but there are moments that are so burned into my brain that I feel like I just saw them yesterday. Most of them are of Takashi Shimura’s face, noble and pained as he struggles to finish out his life. Shimura carries this masterpiece on his back and manages Kanji’s conflicted journey beautifully. It is one of the most gorgeously tender films in existence, and that is due as much to Shimura’s grace as anything else.

James Stewart – It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – Stewart’s performance in Frank Capra’s masterpiece bridges the gap between his pre-World War II boy-next-door charmers and his later hard-as-nails western heroes and Hitchcockian protagonists. Here he is both the happy-go-lucky good guy and, briefly, the disillusioned forgotten man as he is saved from suicide by his archangel (Henry Travers) who takes him on a journey through his past to discover what the world would have been like without him in it. The film is both a valediction of a life well lived and an example of how to live life for those just starting out and Stewart embodies it with full-on conviction and insight.

Spencer Tracy – The Last Hurrah (1958)

Commentary by Peter J. Patrick – John Ford’s “old man’s picture” starred a 58-year-old Tracy, his craggy face already starting to show the ravages of time, as he plays a long-time New England mayor patterned after Boston’s Mayor Curley, who runs one more campaign against a manufactured TV personality who will likely beat him. It was strong material, played mostly for laughs, with Tracy in the best of his old man roles that began with 1955’s Bad Day at Black Rock, continued with this, Inherit the Wind, and Judgment at Nuremberg, ending with 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, as strong a finish as any actor has ever had.

Robert Walker – Strangers on a Train (1951)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – Alfred Hitchcock created a lot of great villains, but there is perhaps none quite as sinisterly memorable as Bruno Anthony. Robert Walker, never better, gives this possibly one-note villain a depth that is unequaled. Bruno is pure evil but also a wounded child, and each moment he is on screen is a balance between the two. It is also a performance that feels even more and more modern each time you visit it, feeling as timeless as Bruno feels inhuman.

Gene Wilder – Young Frankenstein (1974)

Commentary by Tripp Burton – No one was able to make wild, theatrical choices feel more grounded and honest on film than Gene Wilder. He could push the boundaries of reality yet was still always completely believable and his triumph is his Victor Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein. Wilder was a great film comedian, but he was also a great actor, and he imbues the film with an honest thread that justifies every outburst, temper tantrum, and punchline he delivers. It is one of the great comedic performances in film history.