I Examine the Question: Who is My Favorite Actor, Then I Answer it

Cary Grant

Someone asked me recently who my favorite actor is. Oh my. There’s so many sides to that question. Am I looking at someone who consistently gave or gives great performances? Am I leaning toward an actor who is in a lot of my favorite movies? Am I considering star quality? 

How do you compare Cary Grant and Robert DeNiro? They’re from different eras and were expected to do such different types of things. 

Grant is the first name that pops into my mind because he was in so many films that I love — His Girl Friday, Holiday, Talk of the Town, Notorious, The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Mr. Lucky, The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion. Many of them are comedies. Far from being disqualifying that’s a testament to his skills. Being a good comic actor is difficult and Grant was a great one. Grant couldn’t give a performance to match Brando in Streetcar Named Desire (who can?) but then again we’re talking about favorites here not best.

Al Pacino is the second actor who comes to mind. He’s given some of the greatest lead acting performances I’ve ever seen including in three cinematic classics: The Godfather, The Godfather Part 2 and Dog Day Afternoon. He was brilliant as a supporting player in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. He was never better than in Donne Brasco, a lesser film that he stole. He also shone in Serpico, And Justice for All, Panic in Needle Park, The Irishmen, Heat, Insomnia, Scarecrow and Glengarry Glen Ross. I think he’s the greatest actor of the past fifty years. 

My third candidate is Humphrey Bogart. Arguably he’s more star than actor then again he certainly did some serious acting in Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen. He wasn’t merely standing there reading from the script in Casablanca, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Petrified Forest, To Have and Have Not, Dark Passage or Key Largo. Bogart had such on screen presence he could practically make a film just by showing up and he was made for certain roles such as Philip Marlow, Sam Spade and Rick Blaine.

Al Pacino

In scanning my extensive collection of DVDs I note that the actor who appears the most is Max Von Sydow. Many of these are Bergman films such as The Seventh Seal, Winter Light and The Virgin Spring, but he’s also in two films — The Emigrants and the New Land — by another Swedish director, Jan Troell as well as several American films including Hannah and Her Sisters, the Exorcist, Shutter Island, Three Days of the Condor and as the narrator in Europa. I absolutely love his work, he made a lot of good films even better including some of the best in cinema history.

The previously mentioned Robert DeNiro also shows up in a lot of my DVDs: Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Mean Streets the King of Comedy, The Godfather Part 2, Silver Linings Playbook, Jackie Brown, The Deer Hunter and Heat. Wow. And so many iconic performances. His turns as Travis Bickle, Jack LaMotta and the young Vito Coreleone are enough to hang a career on, three careers.

I also like Paul Newman who somehow didn’t win an Oscar for either Hud or The Verdict. Unfortunately Newman’s career including an inordinate number of clunkers and few great films. Of course he was memorable in two films with Robert Redford —Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Sting. Redford is another beloved actor who lit up the screen in The Candidate, All the President’s Men, Downhill Racer and Three Days of the Condor but he was never a great actor at least not in comparison to the likes of DeNiro and Pacino

Dustin Hoffman is unquestionably a great actor as are Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins and Denzel Washington but none of them are enough of my favorite films.

I’m a big fan of Malcolm McDowell but there’s not much to him besides If…. And A Clockwork Orange.

Oh my, I've forgotten Jack Nicholson (Chinatown, The Shining, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces). 

I love William Holden who was so good in Sunset Blvd. Stalag 17, Bridge on the River Kwai and Network but that’s not quite extensive enough a list. Similarly I’m a fan of Burt Lancaster but he doesn’t have enough on his resume either.

James Stewart appears in a lot of good to great films and was amazing in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington but I’ve never fully warmed up to the person he was and that counts for something when you’re talking about favorites. 

I also love Charlie Chaplin —doesn’t everyone? Notably he spent the overwhelming majority of his film career as the Little Tramp character, a different sort of acting. But as a potential favorite he has to rank high.

So too Groucho Marx who essentially played the same character throughout his film career but he did it so well and in so many great comedies.

Marcello Mastrioni

Let’s see I haven’t mentioned William Powell or Jack Lemmon or Woody Allen (he's also been in a lot of my favorites and has directed himself in many) or Leonardo DiCaprio or Henry Fonda or Steve McQueen. My god, McQueen, certainly my favorite actor from the first half of my life and still someone whose work I greatly admire. The Great Escape, Bullitt and Getaway are great examples of star performances by Mr. Cool.

And other than Von Sydow I’ve mentioned no actors from foreign language films. I’ll remedy that by invoking the name of Marcello Mastrioni who was both a “star” and a talented actor. I love him in La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, La Notte, The Organizer, and A Special Day. Then there’s Jean Gabin who starred in such films as La Grande Illusion, Port of Shadows and The Lower Depths. Matti Pellonpää featured in many of Aki Kaurismäki’s early films including Shadows in Paradise, La Vie Da Bohme and Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth. Can’t forget Toshiro Mifune a regular in Akira Kurosawa’s films of the fifties. The Swiss actor, Bruno Gansz deserves a mention for his many roles in German films such as Downfall and Wings of Desire.

Okay, it’s time to fish or cut bait, so who’s my favorite? I’m going with three. My favorite from the first half of the 20th century is Cary Grant, as previously suggested, my favorite after that is Al Pacino and my favorite foreign language actor is Marcello Mastrioni.

Coming up later this week: my favorite actress.