Who was the best actor of the 20th century?

Actor: Akeelah and the Bee, NCIS, Pushing Daisies, Grey's Anatomy aurence Olivier is routinely considered the greatest stage actor of the 20th Century. The problem there is that most of us have to go on secondhand accounts. Few argue that Olivier was as good in films so the question arises: Who was the greatest film actor of the 20th Century. I'm going to go out on a slight limb here and suggest that, although he may not have THE greatest film actor of the 20th Century, he certain deserves the respect and acknowledge of consideration. he best actors that I have chosen have mostly disappeared from the silver screen. I have recently read an article on the ten best of all time and do not know how anyone can limit their choices to only ten. There are dozens of great all time actors that have long gone, let alone ones who are currently active and popular and others who have yet to scale the pyramid of fame. Of the actors that have passed away, I would even go back to some of silent film stars. Shame on anyone who would not even consider that at a time of silent movies, there were no great performances and those actors were mediocre. Lillian Gish is one of those actresses who lived through that period and yet put on challenging performances in speaking roles too. If I widen my scope to theater as well as film I might include other female greats such as Helen Hayes who made a successful transition from a child to adult star. Natalie Wood was also quite gifted when she was very young and also when she became mature. This is a quality not underestimate in actors. Gloria Swanson did some challenging roles, a very convincing come back role in Sunset Boulevard to a good range of silent film roles that were forgotten when talkies got around. Read more in History I can never forget Bettie Davis from “Of Human Bondage” to “Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte” where she plays a convincing role as a distraught and disturbed sister. Clearly here was an actress who could perform well in unsympathetic roles and was able to sustain her come back, even though she went through a court case over her earnings and other actresses like Crawford campaigned against her. I haven’t even begun to think of male actors yet. That said there was Cary Grant who played the debonair and smooth talker but he knew how to play some very convincing ambiguous roles as well like the agent in Charade. This would have made an excellent Hitchcock film had the master of suspense got hold of it before. There were so many other great male actors who are no longer around like Humphrey Bogart, Steve McQueen, James Dean, Lawrence Harvey, Gregory Peck and many others. Many will probably leave out European and other actors that are worth mentioning as greats of all time like Alberto Sordi, an Italian actor who had a wide acting range. One can also mention Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassman who also performed well in comic and serious roles. There were remarkable French actors as well like Phillippe Noiret and Simone Signoret. Current great European actors that are cutting edge are Hannah Schygulla and Klaus Maria Brandauer. So I have mostly mentioned those actors who have passed away and encourage readers to return later to this column to discover what actors that are alive today, are worthy of being called great. The name is Rod Steiger and the name of the game is versatility. Only Gene Hackman can rival Rod Steiger in terms of versatility and Gene Hackman may be the only film actor to seriously rival Rod Steiger as the best there has ever been. I even like Rod Steiger in On the Waterfront. (For my scathing take on this overrated movie, please click here. A recent biography of Marlon Brando includes a full paragraph quote from that article, so I have achieved a little bit of fame. That's all I desire; fame is scary and anyone who pursues it is psychotic.) Steiger is the only member of the On the Waterfront cast that acts like a real human being. Of course, the movie itself has nothing at all to do with reality so that's why he sticks out like a sore thumb. Let's take a look at Steiger's amazing range: He has played Pontius Pilate and small time hoods; he's played a Holocaust survivor and a crazed cowboy; he's played a lonely, homely butcher (TV version of Marty) and W.C. Fields. In fact, Rod Steiger has a lower degree of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon than Kevin Bacon! The man is acting powerhouse that won't let anything stand in his way. If Rod Steiger has given a bad performance-like Gene Hackman-I've never seen it. I've not seen all of Steiger's movies, especially the bad ones, but I do know this: he was robbed of an Oscar for his portrayal in The Pawnbreaker when the Academy-high on goofballs, I guess-decide that Lee Marvin was better in Cat Ballou. That sentence is not a typo. The Pawnbreaker represents the high point of Rod Steiger's career and the real start of his hot streak. Just look at this list of movies that Steiger was in during the early to late-60s: The Longest Day, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, The Sergeant and possibly Steiger's most underrated and overlooked performance in No Way to Treat a Lady. Steiger should have won back to back Oscars for Heat and Lady, especially considering how tame the competition was, but when an actor plays a mental defective, he IS going to win the Oscar. Steiger wasn't even nominated for No Way to Treat a Lady and so lost out to Cliff Robertson for Charley. The only other actor who has a resume that equals Rod Steiger during his 1960s run is Burt Lancaster, who, not coincidentally, is another potential winner in the Best Film Actor sweepstakes. Burt and Rod should have been tied when I did my article on the Best Actor of the 1960s. The Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences made up for their egregious oversight by awarding Steiger the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night. The problem is that this was a character that Steiger could have done in his sleep whereas his performance in The Pawnbreaker is inarguably one of the five greatest film performance of ALL time. The Academy didn't do one of Scorsese/Departed dealios where they gave him an Oscar for his worst work. In fact, I think it says something quite amazing that Steiger won his Oscar against what may have been the most amazing group of nominees for Best Actor so far: Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate, Paul Newman for Cool Hand Luke, Warren Beatty for Bonnie and Clyde and Spencer Tracy for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. And that's not even to mention the competition he beat out just to get nominated: Sidney Poitier for either To Sir With Love or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Jean Martin for The Battle of Algiers, Albert Finney for Charlie Bubbles or Two for the Road, Richard Burton for The Comedians, Martin Sheen for The Incident, Andrew Keir in Quatermass and the Pit, Jason Robards in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre and Alan Arkin in Wait Until Dark. Yes, indeed, one can honestly say that when Rod Steiger won his Oscar, he beat out some of the most intense competition of the 1960s at least. The Rod Steiger of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s clearly wasn't performing at the peak he hit in the 1960s, but like Gene Hackman, any film Steiger appears in automatically gains at least one star in a five star system simply by virtue of his performance. I bet you to watch The Pawnbroker and, if possible, watch it the first time the way I did: at 2:00 in the morning when you can't sleep and you want nothing more than an engaging movie that makes you forget about time completely.

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