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I guess that does indicate very strong acclaim.

I guess counterpoint would be that all of these guys have some of their most notable performances overlooked by Oscars: Die Hard/Harry Potter for Rickman, The Onion Field/Once Upon a Time in America for Woods, 12 Angry Men for Cobb.

Just to be clear, here's how I would rank these guys by criteria:

Acclaim:

Arkin > Woods > Cobb > Rickman

Influence:

Neither have much, I think

Popularity:

Rickman > Woods > Arkin/Cobb

Body of Work:

Cobb > Woods/Rickman/Arkin

All in all, seems pretty non-conclusive.

I guess if acclaim is weighed a bit more, Arkin should probably be at the top of the group.

Criteria: Actors are ranked according to acclaim they received for their craft, influence they had on acting and on other actors, their popular and cultural recognition as well as greatness (acclaim, influence and popularity) of movies they took part in.

Disclaimer: This list is strongly influenced by the Western canon of films. This means that in the broader scope of a global cinema certain regions may be underrepresented, among them Russia, India, China, Africa and Latin America

1. Marlon Brando
2. Charlie Chaplin
3. Laurence Olivier
4. Robert De Niro
5. James Stewart
6. Jack Nicholson
7. Al Pacino
8. Toshiro Mifune
9. Paul Newman
10. Humphrey Bogart
11. Cary Grant
12. Buster Keaton
13. Dustin Hoffman
14. Marcello Mastroianni
15. John Wayne
16. Daniel Day-Lewis
17. Henry Fonda
18. Denzel Washington
19. Alec Guinness
20. Jack Lemmon
21. Tom Hanks
22. Jean Gabin
23. Gregory Peck
24. Sidney Poitier
25. Gary Cooper
26. James Cagney
27. Leonardo DiCaprio
28. Spencer Tracy
29. Gérard Depardieu
30. Peter O'Toole
31. Gene Hackman
32. Clark Gable
33. Clint Eastwood
34. Richard Burton
35. Max von Sydow
36. Burt Lancaster
37. Robert Mitchum
38. Peter Sellers
39. William Holden
40. Anthony Hopkins
41. Kirk Douglas
42. Michael Caine
43. Morgan Freeman
44. Jean-Paul Belmondo
45. Orson Welles
46. Harold Lloyd
47. Sean Connery
48. Alain Delon
49. Robert Duvall
50. Anthony Quinn
51. Vittorio Gassman
52. Rudolph Valentino
53. George C. Scott
54. Robert Redford
55. Montgomery Clift
56. James Dean
57. Gary Oldman
58. Michel Piccoli
59. Klaus Kinski
60. Tom Cruise
61. Harrison Ford
62. Gene Kelly
63. Peter Lorre
64. Fred Astaire
65. Edward G. Robinson
66. Sean Penn
67. Takashi Shimura
68. Philip Seymour Hoffman
69. Douglas Fairbanks
70. Robin Williams
71. Max Linder
72. Groucho Marx/The Marx Brothers
73. Ronald Colman
74. Tatsuya Nakadai
75. Johnny Depp
76. Jackie Chan
77. Fredric March
78. Jeff Bridges
79. James Mason
80. Charles Laughton
81. Michel Simon
82. Jean-Louis Trintignant
83. Bill Murray
84. Ben Kingsley
85. Amitabh Bachchan
86. Dennis Hopper
87. John Barrymore
88. Chishu Ryu
89. Lon Chaney
90. Tony Leung Chiu Wai
91. Laurel and Hardy
92. Jean-Pierre Léaud
93. Errol Flynn
94. Bruce Lee
95. Albert Finney
96. Emil Jannings
97. Christian Bale
98. Brad Pitt
99. Philippe Noiret
100. John Hurt
101. Russell Crowe
102. Walter Matthau
103. Uttam Kumar
104. Rod Steiger
105. Ralph Fiennes
106. Richard Harris
107. Javier Bardem
108. Woody Allen
109. Raj Kapoor
110. Yves Montand
111. Warren Beatty
112. Louis de Funès
113. Yul Brynner
114. Charlton Heston
115. Steve McQueen
116. Mickey Rooney
117. Boris Karloff
118. Totò
119. Claude Rains
120. Willem Dafoe
121. Kevin Spacey
122. Samuel L. Jackson
123. Dirk Bogarde
124. John Gielgud
125. Vincent Price
126. Chow Yun-fat
127. Alberto Sordi
128. Conrad Veidt
129. George Clooney
130. Christopher Walken
131. Donald Sutherland
132. Ian McKellen
133. Michael Douglas
134. Dilip Kumar
135. Paul Muni
136. Lee Marvin
137. Jacques Tati
138. Jean Marais
139. Jerry Lewis
140. Robert Downey Jr.
141. Joaquin Phoenix
142. Jim Carrey
143. Rock Hudson
144. Naseeruddin Shah
145. Geoffrey Rush
146. Omar Sharif
147. Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
148. Peter Finch
149. Lionel Barrymore
150. Rajesh Khanna
151. Sessue Hayakawa
152. King Baggot
153. Jeremy Irons
154. Jon Voight
155. Kenneth Branagh
156. Richard Attenborough
157. Gérard Philipe
158. Erland Josephson
159. Farid Shawqi
160. Ernest Borgnine
161. Heath Ledger
162. Matt Damon
163. Shah Rukh Khan
164. Charles Boyer
165. William Hurt
166. Will Smith
167. Bing Crosby
168. Liam Neeson
169. Edward Norton
170. Christopher Lee
171. Daniel Auteuil
172. Fernandel
173. Nino Manfredi
174. David Niven
175. Ralph Richardson
176. Erich von Stroheim
177. Richard Dreyfuss
178. William S. Hart
179. Gene Wilder
180. Fernando Rey
181. Maximilian Schell
182. Viggo Mortensen
183. Ryan Gosling
184. Tony Curtis
185. Dev Anand
186. Adel Imam
187. Innokenty Smoktunovsky
188. W.C. Fields
189. Ed Harris
190. Tommy Lee Jones
191. Harvey Keitel
192. Thomas Mitchell
193. Walter Brennan
194. Gunnar Björnstrand
195. Bourvil
196. Aamir Khan
197. José Ferrer
198. Fernando Fernán Gómez
199. Nikolay Cherkasov
200. Nicolas Cage
201. Michel Serrault
202. Ugo Tognazzi
203. William Powell
204. George Sanders
205. Joe Pesci
206. James Earl Jones
207. Mel Blanc
208. Song Kang-ho
209. Choi Min-sik
210. Arthur Kennedy
211. Bradley Cooper
212. Joseph Cotten
213. Cantinflas
214. Karl Malden
215. Bruno Ganz
216. John Gilbert
217. Charles Bronson
218. James Coburn
219. Stellan Skarsgård
220. Gian Maria Volonté
221. Eli Wallach
222. John Malkovich
223. Ahmed Zaki
224. Jean-Claude Brialy
225. Melvyn Douglas
226. Bob Hope
227. Walter Huston
228. Abbott and Costello
229. Nanni Moretti
230. Paul Robeson
231. Wallace Beery
232. Tom Courtenay
233. Rex Harrison
234. Benicio del Toro
235. Jake Gyllenhaal
236. Joel McCrea
237. Ewan McGregor
238. Bela Lugosi
239. The Three Stooges
240. Paul Scofield
241. Robert Shaw
242. Gaston Modot
243. John Carradine
244. Harry Dean Stanton
245. Raimu
246. Paul Winfield
247. Mel Gibson
248. Bruce Willis
249. Sylvester Stallone
250. Arnold Schwarzenegger
251. Steve Buscemi
252. Denholm Elliott
253. Roberto Benigni
254. Dana Andrews
255. Michael Chekhov
256. Jason Robards
257. Leslie Cheung
258. Martin Sheen
259. Ethan Hawke
260. Walter Pidgeon
261. Richard Gere
262. Robert Ryan
263. Peter Cushing
264. Takeshi Kitano
265. Rudolf Klein-Rogge
266. Franco Nero
267. Robert Donat
268. Christopher Plummer
269. Peter Ustinov
270. Matthew McConaughey
271. Adrian Brody
272. John Travolta
273. Alan Arkin
274. James Woods
275. Donald Crisp
276. Pedro Infante
277. Lee J. Cobb
278. Alan Rickman
279. Alastair Sim
280. Richard Widmark
281. Victor Mature
282. Victor McLaglen
283. Michael Redgrave
284. Armin Mueller-Stahl
285. Anthony Perkins
286. Basil Rathbone
287. Giancarlo Giannini
288. Bob Hoskins
289. Daniel Craig
290. Christoph Waltz
291. Glenn Ford
292. Gael García Bernal
293. Timothée Chalamet
294. James Caan
295. John Cazale
296. John Garfield
297. Martin Balsam
298. Brendan Gleeson
299. Andy Serkis
300. Leslie Howard
301. Woody Harrelson
302. Adam Sandler
303. Eddie Murphy
304. Steve Martin
305. Martin Landau
306. Aldo Fabrizi
307. Jet Li
308. John Goodman
309. Edward Everett Horton
310. Tim Robbins
311. Ray Milland
312. Mark Ruffalo
313. J.K. Simmons
314. Sterling Hayden
315. Don Cheadle
316. Chris Cooper
317. Frank Sinatra
318. Roy Scheider
319. Vincent Cassel
320. Rutger Hauer
321. Michael Fassbender
322. John Cleese
323. Jean Rochefort
324. Ken Takakura
325. Colin Firth
326. Kevin Costner
327. Leslie Nielsen
328. Mickey Rourke
329. Mads Mikkelson
330. Curd Jürgens
331. Jürgen Prochnow
332. Gert Fröbe
333. Horst Buchcholz
334. Minoru Chiaki
335. Robert Montgomery
336. Fred MacMurray
337. Donald Pleasence
338. Jean Hersholt
339. Maurice Chevalier
340. River Phoenix
341. Mahershala Ali
342. Tom Hardy
343. Jude Law
344. Barry Fitzgerald
345. Jack Palance
346. Hugh Grant
347. Keanu Reeves
348. Randolph Scott
349. Forest Whitaker
350. Billy Bob Thornton
351. Paul Giamatti
352. Kevin Kline
353. Nick Nolte
354. Charles Bickford
355. Jeff Goldblum
356. Hugh Jackman
357. Bruce Dern
358. Ian Holm
359. Sidney Greenstreet
360. John Turturro
361. Ned Beatty
362. Trevor Howard
363. Benedict Cumberbatch
364. Colin Farrell
365. Daniel Kaluuya
366. Jim Broadbent
367. Michael Shannon
368. Tyrone Power
369. Lino Ventura
370. Lee Van Cleef
371. Sam Rockwell
372. Timothy Spall
373. Ward Bond
374. George Arliss
375. Warner Baxter
376. Anthony Wong
377. Oleg Yankovsky
378. Raúl Juliá
379. Al Jolson
380. Jeff Daniels
381. Chadwick Boseman
382. Michael B. Jordan
383. Vittorio De Sica
384. Andrew Garfield
385. Laurence Fishburne
386. Broderick Crawford
387. Paul Lukas
388. Udo Kier
389. Ulrich Mühe
390. Oliver Reed
391. Wallace Reid
392. Alan Hale Sr.
393. Masahiro Motoki
394. Rossano Brazzi
395. Chiwetel Ejiofor
396. Raf Vallone
397. Charles Coburn
398. Dean Stockwell
399. Pierre Fresnay
400. Jean-Pierre Cassel

Alfred Abel
Don Ameche
Edward Arnold
Tadanobu Asano
Lew Ayres
Kevin Bacon
Jean-Pierre Bacri
Alec Baldwin
George Bancroft
Antonio Banderas
Sacha Baron Cohen
Jean-Louis Barrault
Richard Barthelmess
Albert Bassermann
Ralph Bellamy
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Claude Brasseur
Josh Brolin
Mel Brooks
Daniel Brühl
Louis Calhern
Eddie Cantor
Harry Carey Jr.
Sonny Chiba
Brian Cox
James Cromwell
Joe Dallesandro
Ossie Davis
Danny DeVito
Divine
Adam Driver
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
James Garner
Götz George
Danny Glover
Hugh Griffith
Edmund Gwenn
Kamal Haasan
Cedric Hardwicke
Jack Hawkins
Stanley Holloway
Oscar Isaac
Ben Johnson
Louis Jourdan
Louis Jouvet
Shintaro Katsu
Michael Keaton
George Kennedy
Hardy Krüger
Alan Ladd
Evgeny Leonov
Tony Leung Ka Fai
John Lithgow
Roger Livesey
Christopher Lloyd
William H. Macy
Herbert Marshall
Dean Martin
Malcolm McDowell
John Mills
Tom Mix
Alfred Molina
Frank Morgan
Jorge Negrete
Ramon Novarro
Daniel Olbrychski
Michael Palin
Jacques Perrin
Richard Pryor
Anthony Quayle
Christopher Reeve
Jean Reno
Burt Reynolds
Roy Rogers
Hrithik Roshan
Kurt Russell
Hiroyuki Sanada
Mack Sennett
Toni Servillo
Gary Sinise
Sol Kyung-gu
Anatoly Solonitsyn
Terence Stamp
David Strathairn
Henry Travers
Anton Walbrook
M. Emmett Walsh
Jack Warden
H. B. Warner
Tom Wilkinson
Louis Wolheim

RIP Robert Duvall

RIP.

RIP

Another BIG RIP for sure - just watched "Tender Mercies" this afternoon for the first time, great performance.

RIP Tom Noonan

RIP

The new list is up on a main site btw.

Great work!

Dubrow555 wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 7:46 pmGreat work!

Seconded and of course I'm too late now with the typos but it should be "Mads MIkkelsen", "Horst Buchholz" and "Adrien Brody".

Sorry about the typos, paul. Hopefully they will be fixed once we take a stab on pushing the list to top 500 next year.

Not gonna bother lew about it but now I wonder if we overlooked Nic Cage for promotion, after working on his top 10 performances. He did a lot of acclaimed stuff since 2018, think Mandy, Pig, Dream Scenario, Longlegs. Not sure about the exact spot but I'd say he's greater than Tony Curtis. Maybe to group him with Viggo and Gosling?