re: Actor mt Rushmore

quote:

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As in your favorite most influential actors I have to say the easy choice is

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These two things are tough to do together.


If we're talking most influential, it's a really short list to pull from:

Charlie Chaplin
John Wayne
Jimmy Stewart
Marlon Brando
Toshiro Mifune
Katherine Hepburn
Peter Sellers
Jack Nicholson
Daniel Day Lewis
Maybe De Niro, Duvall, Redford, Newman, Streep all have arguments for the list as well.

You have your icons - Chaplin, Wayne, Hepburn. Your artists - Brando, Mifune, DDL. And your jacks of all trades - Nicholson, Sellars, Stewart.



If I'm cutting it down to 4:

Charlie Chaplin - First real movie star. There are few people in Hollywood more influential than Chaplin

Toshiro Mifune - Him or Brando. I'm going to take Mifune for his worldwide appeal, his stretches over TV and film, and honestly I think his range is slightly better.

Jimmy Stewart - He fits the the Sellars/Nicholson bucket. He did every genre and knocked it out of the park. He was a star. He was America's favorite. Westerns to Hitchcock. He is the prime example of an actor who brings the same core to a film, being relatably Jimmy, but somehow always feels different.

Daniel Day Lewis - I'm going to put 2 artists on the list because these are primarily artists. I'm choosing DDL now because I think he brought back intense method actor better than anyone else. I think Pitt and DiCaprio branching out, Hardy, Bale and Oldman taking on more complex roles - all owe themselves to DDL making that level of acting sort of mainstream again. Even if they are all still popular it feels like they are all trying to copy him now. Even Hanks has taken a page from DDL's playbook. I think his influence will last a good long while. I accept this as a hypothesis and not as a "has already happened."