who is the most versatile actor today?

so go on then friends...answer the ?

i am probably going to get so dissed for my answer to this... but the sole actor i can think of is nicolas cage. wheter he is playing trailer trash in raising arizona or a drunk in leaving las vegas, cage can pull off any role and make it his own. yet he never lets himself be typecast. his roles are always surprising to me...go ahead and laugh at my choice

I agree with Cage.

I think Ryan Gosling is a up and comer.


Johnny Depp is always versatile.

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Definitely Nicholas Cage and Tom Hanks!!

I'll go for Keanu Reeves and Tom Hanks as well...

Daniel Day-Lewis

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i agree with caitlyn, and also think


and

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Philip Seymour Hoffman

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My answer would be Robert De Niro. He is the man!

I would have to go with Hoffman as probably the most versatile. Depp and Cage are two that I sort of want to put up there, but while they are both versatile, there is some level of Depp and Cage that is always in the character. Not to the level of say Vince Vaughn's acting, where you don't get the character, you get Vince Vaughn every time, but there is some level of that with both Depp and Cage.

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Is it OK if I just smile, eMilee? As a fellow southerner, you should know that "trailer trash" and "a drunk" are virtually the same role!

true its the same thing but look at this way cage can pull off those crass roles at the same time as a family related in national treasure movies.
i also must say that john cusak fits in this catagory so nicely. ...he can handle any role he is given and make it almost believable. all the while, he can hold my attention whether i am bitting my nails or laughing loudly.

[quote=bokscutta;404226]so go on then friends...answer the ?[/

Most versatile actor today? Only one answer—71-year-old Albert Finney!
Just look at the wide range of roles he has play—the randy young adventurer Tom Jones (1963); the back-and-forth switches from young suitor to family-man to bored middle-aged husband in Two for the Road (1963); the severe changes from young man starting out in life to the old miser Scrooge (1970), a role in which he both sings and dances; his finicky and accented portrayal of Hercule Peroit almost exactly like Agatha Christie wrote him in Murder on the Orient Express; confronting the supernatural in Wolfen (1981); again dancing and singing as Daddy Warbucks in Annie, (1972); the aging actor in The Dresser (1983); a 1920s Irish gangster in his prime in Miller’s Crossing; the attorney in Erin Brockovich (2000); the dying father in The Big Fish (2003); the uncredited Gaspar LeMarque in Ocean’s 12 (2004); the voice of Finis Everglot in the cartoon production of the Corpse Bride (2005); the blind ex-slave-trader turned cleric in Amazing Grace (2007); plus his roles in two other movies that year, the Bourne Ultimatum and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

For Finney’s second film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), he was nominated for two BAFTA awards, Best Actor, and Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles in 1961, winning the latter. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones, Murder on the Orient Express, The Dresser, and Under the Volcano (1984). He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Erin Brockovich. He won a Golden Globe award for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the TV mini-series The Gathering Storm. Finney started on stage in the British theater and has often taken breaks from Hollywood to return to the stage. So his versatile acting career encompasses stage, screen, and television; musical comedies; comedy, drama, and cartoon; starring and supporting roles; roles in which he aged or was otherwise heavily made-up during the shooting; heroes and villains.

Dustin Hoffman is very good, too, but I don’t think he was ever called on to sing and dance in a role (however, Finney has never played a mentally incapacitated person or in drag, at least not on screen as I recall).

Among the young actors, I think the only one who has displayed similar versatility is Johnny Depp. But not as much as Finney and Hoffman.

None of them, however, could touch the late Paul Muni or Lon Chaney (and before you say Chaney played only monsters, look at him without makeup in Tell It to the Marines. The man made nearly 200 films, and wasn’t the villain in all of them. In his only talkie, he was the voice of 5 characters.)

Not to disagree with you since it wasn't a speaking part or anything, rather just some fun trivia: I believe you do get to see Finney in drag in the ladies dressing room in Miller's Crossing.

He is there, though only as an inside joke on the set and not as his character, Leo. But yes, one of the women in the restroom at the club, when Tom (Gabriel Byrne) goes in to confront Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) and she slugs him is indeed the incredible Mr. Finney.

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Not to put down your pick of Cage, I've long had the feeling that he could be better than what he is. My problem with Cage is the same problem I have with Steve McQueen, John Wayne, and Lee Marvin--I always get the feeling they're playing themselves instead the character. They plug their own personalities into whatever role they're given so that I'm always conscious that it's Lee or Wayne or McQueen or Cage that I'm watching. Guess what I'm saying is that they are all movie stars rather than movie actors. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing since they have personnas that people enjoy watching, but that means they change the role to fit them rather than changing their performance to fit the role.

I think probably Cusack has more versatility than Cage, but I haven't seen enough of their films to say for sure. I wish Cage would pick better films--I didn't much care for the first National Treasure--that treasure-hunt schtick has already been done better in Indiana Jones. And I kept waiting for some sort of plot to surface in Con Air instead of tough talk and special effects. Same thing with The Rock.
Oddly enough, some of the best acting I've seen by Cage was in that film where he thought he was turning into a vampire; there were other things I disliked about that film, but he at least was interesting.

Not trying to flame you--you may be right and I may be wrong, but for the sake of discussion, that's how I look at it.

Really??? I must have missed that! I assume he was just there for the hell of it, since it didn't advance the plot or anything. I'll have to look closer the next time I see that film.

But if true, then chalk up one more accomplishment for Finney! Now if we can just find him playing a mentally challenged person. . . .

Good choice in Albert Finney but then he's had many more years on the likes of Johnny Depp who'll go on to many more roles.

Funny, we've just been discussing Christian Bale and although I like him in lots of films, I can always 'see' him acting if you know what I mean, like he's trying too hard or summat. Philip Seymour Hoffman on the other hand is easy in his skin in his films.

Tony Leung is a versatile actor as well as being very gorgeous, great character actor. Javier Bardem also and Benicio del Toro.

Christian Bale- goes from POW to a magician, to a version of Bob Dylan, to Batman

Can anyone else do that?!

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The most versatile actor today I would have to say for me is Will Smith. He does drama, comedy, action and thriller's. Most of them of a great quality IMO.

Tom Hanks although one of my fav's is versatile in the sense no matter the character he manages to pull off a good job of it and can do something like You've got Mail and then Castaway or The Terminal but its always drama, you couldnt take place him in an high adrenaline action movie or anything like that.