What do I consider “good” acting? When an actor has succeeded brilliantly, you will forget the actor altogether and see, instead, a character. And let’s face it: nobody is about to get past Tom Cruise, Madonna, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Jim Carey, or Dustin Hoffman any more. They are celebrities. But I have watched films in which Peter Sellers so completely disappeared into a character that I failed to recognize him. Off hand, here’s a few of my favorite performances by an actor or actress, all-time:
- Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” (1965)
- Ellen Burstyn in “Resurrection” (1980)
- Holly Hunter in “Raising Arizona”
- Tom Wilkinson in “Normal” (2002)
- Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver” (1972)
- The entire cast of “Topsy Turvy”
- Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull”
- Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”
- Helen Mirren in “The Queen” (200)
- Al Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon”
- Amy Adams in “Junebug”
- Charlie Chaplin in “City Lights”
- Buster Keaton in “The General”
- Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now”
- Maggie Smith in “Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”
- Max Von Sydow in “The Seventh Seal”
- Liv Ullman in “Scenes From a Marriage”
- Emma Thompson in “Wit”.
- Adrien Brody in “The Pianist”