re: Best male and female acting performance you've ever seen in a movie?

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Val Kilmer - Tombstone is my all time favorite acting job for a male

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If we limited only to support roles - and there are so many great ones (relative to great leads, IMHO), this would definitely make my Top 2 or 3 - perhaps #1.

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Female - Kathy Bates in Misery still haunts me to this day

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Pretty sure I have this as second to McDormand's Fargo. Because Misery isn't as rewatchable as Fargo (or as much fun, despite having darker content), that should not detract from Bates' brilliant performance. For that matter, I think she was the best thing about Titanic, possibly excepting Billy Zane.

Montgomery Clift's cameo in Judgment at Nuremberg

Joanne Woodward in Three Faces of Eve

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Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire in the original Rocky. They were a believable couple, and Shire completely becomes Adrian (she had been a completely different character in GF1 and GF2). The other actors (Meredith, Weathers, Burton) were also fantastic, which is why the original is still the best of the Rocky series.

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Total agreement.

That being said:
All great acting jobs - favorites/bests

Male:
Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws
Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone
George C. Scott - as/in in Patton
Peter Sellers - 3 roles in Dr. Strangelove
Humphrey Bogart - Rick in Casablance


Female:
Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (fell in love with her)
Margaret Hamilton - The Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz (scared the bejeebers out of little me at the kiddie matinee way back when)
Sigourney Weaver - as Ripley in Alien (1st)
Miranda Otto - as Eowyn in Lord of the Rings trilogy
Maggie Smith - as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter series