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Daniel Day-Lewis...the greatest actor ever?


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Has Julianne Moore really not won anything? That is surprising.As for Dicaprio, his performances are really good. The problem is that he is always up against other performances that are far superior to his. The only time he definitely should have won was in 1993 for What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Can you believe that Tommy Lee Jones won for Best-Supporting for The Fugitive?As for Johnny Depp, he is a terrific actor. But not one of his roles has been good enough to win when he has been nominated. Perhaps if he stops working with Gore Verbinski and Tim Burton, he may have a better shot.

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I believe a strong argument can be made for this. He has only acted in 28 films total which makes his 3 leading actor Oscars absolutely amazing and he is the only actor to ever win this many leading actor awards at the Oscars. The argument can also be made that he should have won Oscars for his leading roles in Gangs of New York and In the Name of the Father as well.

What are your thoughts on this?

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Even Daniel Day-Lewis has problems with that classification.

His Oscar glory put him ahead of Hollywood legends including Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, and Dustin Hoffman.

But the 55-year-old Lincoln star was bemused when asked if he was now “the world’s greatest actor”.

“It’s daft isn’t it? “Sean [Penn] had to go through all this a few years ago. It changes all the time.”

In any such discussion you would have to include:

Robert De Niro

Marlon Brando

Jack Nicholson

Al Pacino

Sean Penn

Laurence Olivier

James Stewart

Humphrey Bogart

James Cagney

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It's a matter of personal preference.

I prefer Denzel's drunken gangster cop characters over DDL's wild-eyed anger management types. Haven't seen Lincoln yet though.

And while the costumes might be slightly different, DiCaprio's biography characters and his fictional characters all tend to be pretty much the same.

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totally agree with TOM.. it really does boil down to personal preference. Using the Oscars is also a poor way to gage who the best really is since its really hard to tell what makes performance "X" better than performance "Y" in a movie that had good/bad script, director, supporting cast, etc.

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I actually do think DiCaprio is a great actor, his biggest problem is he's never really had a signature or memorable role, at least since What's Eating Gilbert Grape way back when, and I think he actively tried to move far away from that to avoid a character actor career. He makes the best of his roles and does make the characters better, but the majority of them are too average, likeable types, even if the movies themselves are exciting. I was really happy to see him branch out in Django this year, and if he can find the right part he'll finally get his oscar.

That being said, he's nowhere close to the best actor working today, let alone of all time. DDL certainly is a candidate, but my two personal favorites are Gary Oldman and John Turturro. (I really wish the latter got more leading roles). But a lot of the time the best acting goes on in the periphery of more popular actors, as exhibited here with the loathsome Adam Sandler:

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People play the same character over and over. Some of them just get lucky and happen to pick the right movies to get the most success of. Johnny Depp is guilty of being the same character in almost every movie unless it's a dramatic one. I like Leo but he's like exactly the same in every movie. I'm not sure if it's right to blame the actors, or more that movies suck and have horrible writing that makes it impossibles for characters to have actual depth and diversity. I almost think that the best actors would be ones that aren't from Canada or the US. Because they can use different accents to an extent to break apart their characters more, as stupid as that might sound. Philip Seymour Hoffman's accent and voice are too distinctive in every movie, and it makes it hard for me to think of him as a different character, not to mention his appearance.

But yeah, I definitely think the best actors are the ones that can change their appearance and their accent and pull it off in a believable way. And like.. actually change their appearance. Not just get a haircut.

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I actually do think DiCaprio is a great actor, his biggest problem is he's never really had a signature or memorable role, at least since What's Eating Gilbert Grape way back when, and I think he actively tried to move far away from that to avoid a character actor career. He makes the best of his roles and does make the characters better, but the majority of them are too average, likeable types, even if the movies themselves are exciting. I was really happy to see him branch out in Django this year, and if he can find the right part he'll finally get his oscar.

That being said, he's nowhere close to the best actor working today, let alone of all time. DDL certainly is a candidate, but my two personal favorites are Gary Oldman and John Turturro. (I really wish the latter got more leading roles). But a lot of the time the best acting goes on in the periphery of more popular actors, as exhibited here with the loathsome Adam Sandler:

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