![]() 100 Greatest Movie Performances of All Time by Premiere Magazine Part 2 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |
![]() 100 Greatest Movie Performances of All Time by Premiere Magazine (part 2, by reverse ranking) |
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Character Name | Played By | Film Title | The Performance |
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Diana Scott | Julie Christie | Darling (1965) | A mercurial, spoiled, manipulative model/actress anti-heroine. |
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Lili Von Shtupp | Madeline Kahn | Blazing Saddles (1974) | A slatternly, speech-impaired Germanic bar performer, billed as the "Teutonic Titwillow". |
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Tony Manero | John Travolta | Saturday Night Fever (1977) | A strutting, cocky, narcissistic, intoxicating disco dancer. |
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Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester | Judy Garland | ![]() |
A vulnerable club singer with a fabulous voice and twitchy lips. |
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Karen Silkwood | Meryl Streep | Silkwood (1983) | A suffering Texan whistle-blower at an unsafe nuclear plant. |
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Hannibal Lecter | Anthony Hopkins | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | A brilliant psychiatrist/serial killer with a taste for human flesh. |
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Norma Desmond | Gloria Swanson | ![]() |
A washed-up, monomaniacal silent-film diva. |
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Dr. David Huxley | Cary Grant | ![]() |
A strait-laced, bumbling paleontologist who stammers, cringes, walks into doors, bumps heads, sings with a dog, slips on an olive, dons a negligee, etc. |
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Henry Drummond | Spencer Tracy | Inherit the Wind (1960) | A gruff, persuasive lawyer with leonine scowls who exposes the inanity and hatred behind a new law forbidding the teaching of evolution. |
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Jane Craig | Holly Hunter | Broadcast News (1987) | An effervescent, complicated, and neurotic TV news producer. |
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Jerry/Daphne | Jack Lemmon | ![]() |
A grouchy Chicago bass player transformed into a Miami party girl dressed in comical drag. |
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'Fast' Eddie Felson | Paul Newman | The Hustler (1961) | A cocky, perennially-losing pool shark. |
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Mabel Longhetti | Gena Rowlands | A Woman Under the Influence (1974) | A eager-to-please housewife slowly going crazy. |
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Sid Vicious | Gary Oldman | Sid & Nancy (1986) | A desperate, overdosing punk rock band member. |
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Amon Goeth | Ralph Fiennes | ![]() |
A depraved, driven and restless Nazi concentration camp commandant. |
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Annie Hall | Diane Keaton | ![]() |
A ditzy, loopy, nervous, complicated and intelligent woman. |
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Severine Serizy | Catherine Deneuve | Belle de Jour (1967, Fr.) | An icily timid, haute-bourgeois wife with bizarre masochistic dreams who works afternoons at a brothel. |
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Ellen Ripley | Sigourney Weaver | Aliens (1986) | A tough, buffed, bad-ass mama facing the otherworldly alien with assertive girl power. |
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Lasse Karlsson | Max Von Sydow | Pelle the Conqueror (1987) | A Swedish widower who emigrated to Denmark with his beloved young son. |
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Sarah Tobias | Jodie Foster | The Accused (1988) | A multi-faceted gang-rape victim with a sharp tongue and shady reputation. |
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Virgil Tibbs | Sidney Poitier | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | A Philadelphia homicide detective embroiled in a murder case in the Deep South with a redneck police chief. |
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Tracy Lord | Katharine Hepburn | ![]() |
A regal rich girl with a radiant, mischievous, sexy, and ebullient spirit. |
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Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting | Daniel Day-Lewis | Gangs of New York (2002) | A murderous, boisterous, angry-eyed, passionate, and self-rightous overlord. |
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Miss Kenton | Emma Thompson | Remains of the Day (1993) | A dutiful and gracefully-defiant head housekeeper of a 1930s English manor, involved with an emotion-smothering model butler. |
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Tom Joad | Henry Fonda | ![]() |
An ex-con Everyman forced on the Okie migration to California during the Great Depression. |