Appreciation for British actors and actresses

Channel 4 recently counted down Britain's top 10 greatest actors, and Anthony Hopkins won.
So I wondered who everybody thinks is Britains best actors and actresses?

Best Actors
Well in my opinion one of Britains finest actors is Gary Oldman, he is just a phenomonal performer. Yesterday I brought the excellent Leon and have to say the character Stansfield was Oldman's finest performance. OK granted I would like to see him play more good guys but he constantly reminds me that he's the best british actor working.

Ewan McGregor is another fine performer jumping into the starlight as a junkie and finding fame as a Jedi, Oh and he's going to rock in The Island

Michael Caine- one of Britains finest
Tom Wilkinson- another excellent performer

Best Actresses
Kate winslet is one of Britains finest actresses, she is such a natural performer.
Dame Judi Dench- She is a legend to British cinema.

So who do you think is Britains best actors and actresses?

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The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist

i love anthony hopkins...
and michael caine
ewan mcgregor
robert carlisle
dougray scott
catherine zeta-jones
geoffrey rush
tom wilkenson
judi densch
thandie newton
gary oldman
jonathan pryce
patrick stewart
cary elwes
ian mckellon
ian holmes
christopher lee

Geoffrey Rush is a great actor. He's also from Australia.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

and i tried to be so careful....

Gary Oldman
Tim Roth
Ray Winstone
Robert Carlyle
Ewan McGregor
Colin Farrell - When he is acitng, and not being a twat
Simon Pegg - Spaced alone warrants his entry into this list

Will add actresses at a later date.

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My top 10 favorite British actors...

1. Michael Caine
2. Peter Sellers
3. Albert Finney
4. Charlie Chaplin
5. Gary Oldman
6. Daniel Day-Lewis
7. Ewan McGregor
8. Robert Carlyle
9. Cary Grant
10. Rowan Atkinson

He's from Dublin, Ireland, which ain't in Britain.

Off the top of my head:


1. Alec Guinness

The rest-

Peter Sellers
Basil Rathbone
James Robertson Justice
Tim Spall
David Thewlis
Kenneth Branagh
Robert Carlyle
Ian Hart
Ray Winstone
Cary Grant
Charles Laughton
Ben Kingsley
James Mason
Albert Finney


1. Julie Christie

The Rest-

Emily Watson
Samantha Morton
Jenny Agutter
Glenda Jackson
Vanessa Redgrave
Helen Mirren
Emma Thompson

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Can we disown Cary Elwes??

To add to the ones already mentioned - my current favourite Paddy Considine, also fellow scouser Ian Hart is ace, as is Pete Postlethwaite, Sean Pertwee, Christian Bale, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Eccleston, Paul Bettany, Nick Moran, and Tom Bell (who I haven't seen in anything for ages)


actresses - Samantha Morton, Geraldine McEwan, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Helena Bonham Carter and Kathy Burke.

I take it from the actors listed you're looking for currently alive and working actors, not all-time greats who may be dead and gone?

Assuming so, here are my top ten from the British Isles...


1. Albert Finney
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Saturday Night & Sunday Morning (1960), Tom Jones (1963), Two for the Road (1967), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), Under the Volcano (1984), Miller's Crossing (1990), "The Green Man" (1990), The Playboys (1992), "Cold Lazarus" & "Karaoke" 1996), Erin Brockovich (2000)


2. Michael Caine
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965), Alfie (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967), The Italian Job (1969), Get Carter (1971), Sleuth (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), California Suite (1978), Educating Rita (1983), Hannah & Her Sisters (1986), Mona Lisa (1986), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Blood & Wine (1996), Last Orders (2001), The Quiet American (2002), Batman Begins (2005)


3. Daniel Day-Lewis
GREAT PERFORMANCES: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Room with a View (1985), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), My Left Foot (1989), The Age of Innocence (1993), In the Name of the Father (1993), The Crucible (1996), The Boxer (1997), Gangs of New York (2000), The Ballad of Jack & Rose (2005)


4. Julie Christie
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Petulia (1968), The Go-Between (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Don’t Look Now (1973), Shampoo (1975), Heat & Dust (1983), Hamlet (1996), Afterglow (1997), No Such Thing (2001), Finding Neverland (2004)


5. Kenneth Branagh
GREAT PERFORMANCES: ”Fortunes of War” (1987), Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog (2001), ”Conspiracy” (2001), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), ”Warm Springs” (2005)


6. John Hurt
GREAT PERFORMANCES: A Man for All Seasons (1966), ”I, Claudius” (1976), Midnight Express (1978), The Elephant Man (1980), Heaven’s Gate (1980), The Osterman Weekend (1983), ”King Lear” (1984), The Hit (1984), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), Scandal (1989), The Field (1990), Wild Bill (1995), Love & Death on Long Island (1997), Owning Mahowny (2003), Dogville (2004)


7. Ben Kingsley
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Gandhi (1982), Pascali’s Island (1988), Without A Clue (1988), ”Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story” (1989), Bugsy (1991), Schindler’s List (1993), Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Death & the Maiden (1994), ”The Tale of Sweeny Todd” (1998), Sexy Beast (2000), House of Sand and Fog (2003)


8. Helen Mirren
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Age of Consent (1969), O Lucky Man! (1973), The Long Good Frioday (1980), Excalibur (1981), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Pascali’s Island (1988), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), the ”Prime Suspect” series (1991-2003), The Madness of King George III (1994), Some Mother’s Son (1996), ”The Passion of Ayn Rand” (1999), Last Orders (2001), Gosford Park (2001), Calendar Girls (2003)


9. Terence Stamp
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Billy Budd (1962), The Collector (1965), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Superman II (1980), The Hit (1984), Alien Nation (1988), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), The Limey (1999)


10. Gary Oldman
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Sid & Nancy (1986), Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Track 29 (1988), Chattahoochee (1989) Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), State of Grace (1990), JFK (1991), Dracula (1992), Romeo is Bleeding (1993), Léon: The Professional (1994), Immortal Beloved (1994), The Contender (2000), Batman Begins (2005)



*SPECIAL MENTION
Clive Owen
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Croupier (1998), Gosford Park (2001), BMW's "The Hire" shorts (2001), I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003), Closer (2004), SIN CITY (2005)

How could I forget Paddy?

how could i forget kenneth?
and john hurt and terence stamp
and colin firth....
gerard butler...

Wow, I had no idea Christian Bale was Welsh. Can you imagine him with the accent?

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TOP 100 | "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"

Claude Rains, one of my favorite actors, now gone, appeared in some great movies including :

The Invisible Man (1933)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
They Made Me a Criminal (1939)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
The Seahawk (1940)
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1940)
Casablanca (1942)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Notorious (1946)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Hugh Grant

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Sadly not. C4 have an annoying habit of assuming the audience needs spoonfeeding in shows like this. I don't know what criteria they used but if it's anything like the 100 Greatest Albums show from a while back (where the public picked 100 albums from a selection of 150, or something), the channel knows who's gonna be featuring heavily.

Link

It's like picking your favourite colour from a chart in a car brochure....

EDIT - I mean, Number 5: Orlando Bloom

My goodness that's crap. I mean if you took those hundred names and put them in a completely different order, maybe it wouldn't be so horrible. There would still be some very suspect names in the bottom ten or so on each list, but you might be able to live with it if Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley were at the very end of the lists, not the beginning.

Sad indeed.

Holden nails it again....

I'll add:

Christian Bale

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All of the above.

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I don't know about them being the best, but here are my favorites.

Top Ten Favorites
Greer Garson
Emma Thompson
Judi Dench
Kate Winslet
Julie Andrews

Cary Grant
Ronald Colman
Claude Rains
Michael Caine
Alan Rickman


I also love...Charles Laughton, Charlie Chaplin, Anthony Hopkins, Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley, Rex Harrison, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Maggie Smith, Keira Knightley and so on....