Actors who are always in good films

I haven't been through this thread, so most of these guys have probably already been named.

I have a lot of these guys' films, so I'm probably a little biased in their favor:

Tommy Lee Jones
Tom Hanks
Russell Crowe
Kevin Costner


Some very good actors who probably don't get the attention they deserve:

Paul Giamatti
Steve Buscemi
John Cusack
Billy Crudup

Sometimes great, other times, not so much:

Bruce Willis
Nicolas Cage
Eddie Murphy (always good in a comedy)


One actor I'd like to mention, but I'm not sure where to put him, is Jeff Bridges. He's had some success here and there throughout the years, but he really seems to have hit his stride later in his career. The Big Lebowski, Crazy Heart & True Grit have been thre straight stellar performances.

Kevin Bacon and Leo Dicaprio own this thread

Three names popped into my head right now.

Michael Caine, Choi Min-sik and Gary Oldman.

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~Mad enough. Do you see yourself? The seeds of your destruction were sown long ago, and now he will reap the harvest. He owns your mind; you've just been renting. You owe a debt and he will collect.~

Razor, you know I love you, but you can't put Michael Caine in this list.

Ryan Gosling tends to work with really good filmmakers most of the time. The only weak films he has been in off the top of my head is Stay and Fracture. Still waiting for the day that him and Christopher Nolan work together.

without a doubt, Ben Afflek and Matt Damon

They work brilliantly together.

*coughPhantomscough*

You don't like Phantoms, I think that is his best movie. And a really good movie also.

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I agree with most of what everyone has said. The actors I think are great are:

Johnny depp
Robin Williams
Kevin spacey
Robert deniro
Leonardo dicaprio

And.... Brendan Fraser. I love him even if he is a bit silly sometimes

Off the top of my head

Matt Damon - solid is about as bad as any of his films seem to get these days, with a lot of crackers in there
Tom Hanks - A guy who makes even average films enjoyable
Bill Murray - Stripes, Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Quick Change, Groundhog Day, Ed Wood, Kingpin, Rushmore etc
James Stewart - Not seen a huge percentage of his films but any I have seen I've liked (Wonderful Life, Mr Smith..., Rope, Harvey, Vertigo, Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Man Who Knew Too Much, Call Northside 777 etc)
Kevin Costner - An interesting one. I think he's been in a lot of good/great films which are overshadowed/forgotten by some massive flops (Waterworld, Postman)

Robert Downey Jr is very close. Ryan Gosling is on his way to making the list. Oh and Johnny Depp would have be on the list up until the 00s when his films with Burton started to slip and all the Pirates sequels kinda sucked.

And right now anything that Joseph Gordon Levitt does is usually good. He seems to go for a lot of interesting, quirky films - 10 Things I Hate About You, Manic, Mysterious Skin, Brick, The Lookout, 500 Days of Summer, Inception. And then there is Hesher and 50/50, two I've not seen but really fancy

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Johnny Depp was amazing in The Rum Diary.

Kate Winslet, she literally makes only good movies, it's quite amazing actually. With Robert Deniro you get Little Fockers, with Kevin Bacon you get Death Sentence. With Kate Winslet you get, wait what's that? nothing bad? exactly. You get good movies.











enough said!

I own both these movies, and I think they're great. I know they bombed at the box office, and that's what matters in any media field. Forget art, form & content, show us the money.

I think Costner may very well be my favorite director. Along with these two, he also directed *Dances With Wolves (1990) and Open Range (2003)

The movies he's directed are filmed on a grand, sweeping scale. Larger than life backdrops. Beautiful & vast, be it ocean, mountains, or the plains. The guy has a knack for capturing how big the world is.




*Dances With Wolves is the movie my wife and I saw on our first date.. Looong time ago.

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Totally agree. I adore Kate Winslet.

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Jodie Foster!!! cant forget about her

I haven't seen a bad Denzel Washington movie. I've seen average, but not bad.

And I think Morgan Freeman and Russell Crowe deserve a little consideration.

Training Day. There's one bad movie off the top of my head.

Man on Fire especially.

I don't think I've seen a good Denzel movie outside Philadelphia

It sure isn't Michael Caine.

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Training Day and Man on Fire are bad movies? I can see how you don't like them, but bad? Really?