re: At the peak of their popularity which actor would you say was the biggest box office draw?

I always liked Michael J Fox. Parkinson's ended his career too soon.

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you arent interested in critical thinking.

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Sure I am.

But your point is SUBJECTIVE. I provided QUANTITATIVE evidence.

Forrest Gump: Approximately 79 million tickets sold. At the time that was equivalent to about 30% of the U.S. population.

In contrast, Tom Cruise's single biggest move by draw was Top Gun And It sold about 48 million tickets domestically, or about 20% of the U.S. population in 1987.

That's roughly 50% more of the population of the day seeing Forrest Gump. You can subjectively argue that Cruise was the bigger star. But if we're measuring actual box-office draw, Hanks was the bigger draw at his peak. Sorry, but those are the numbers.

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Rank Actor Top 10 Box Office Total Average per Top-10 Movie
1 Tom Cruise $6.93 billion $692.6 million
2 Tom Hanks $6.76 billion $676.3 million
3 Will Smith $6.35 billion $635.1 million
4 Leonardo DiCaprio $6.15 billion $614.8 million
5 Matt Damon $5.83 billion $582.6 million
6 Brad Pitt $4.34 billion $433.7 million

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But here's the flaw with that methodology. You can't look at box office $$$$ because of every increasing ticket prices. You have to look at # of tickets sold. Also if someone does just a couple of more movies then their numbers get skewed upward. A better metric would be tickets sold for their Top 10 movies. If you do that here is what you get:

Rank Actor Tickets sold for their top 10 movies
1 Tom Hanks 430 million
2 Tom Cruise 407 million
3 Will Smith 369 million
4 Leonardo DiCaprio 340 million
5 Matt Damon 303 million
6 Brad Pitt 259 million

Again, Hanks come out on Top.

Cruise
Hanks
Leo
Will
Pitt
Damon

At his peak he has to be included in the discussion.

To old D H Lawrence ... nik nik nik nik fffff indians

There was no one hotter than Arnold in the late 80's to early 90's. Not sure where he ranks after the 6 shown.

John Wayne

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Arnold in the late 80's to early 90's.

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The action stars are an interesting discussion, as well as comedic actors. You went to an Arnie, Stallone, Norris, Van Damme movie to specifically see them. And comedies with Carey, E. Murphy and Sandler.

I always thought Collateral was his best work

John Wayne