What does it take to be a movie icon? One successful film is not enough, you have to become a living legend, a role model for your peers, an everlasting presence on the big screen. A true icon would appear in a scene for two minutes and leave a momentous impression, even without a single line. So here they are – the ten most iconic movie stars of all time!
10. James Dean
Best known for: Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden
Critical acclaim: Nominated for two Oscars.
Popular acclaim: James Dean became an icon almost momentarily - he just had to appear on the screen to make women fall in love with home and men wanting to be like him. The quintessential rebel, Dean alongside Brando highlighted the new generation of actors after the Second World War – robust, masculine, blunt, raw, they did not care about conventional rules or the requirements of society. Dean died at the slender age of 24, before he could fulfill his potential. But his meteoric career that lasted just four years left such an indelible trail in Hollywood’s history that he still remains one of the greatest legends of cinema.
9. Humphrey Bogart
Best known for: Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon
Critical acclaim: Won an Oscar for The African Queen.
Popular acclaim: Bogart was arguably the biggest movie star in the first half of the 20th century and a true Hollywood legend. You just have to mention Casablanca and that immediately puts him in a league of his own. It is no wonder the American Film Institute named him the greatest male movie star of the century back in 1999.
8. Charlie Chaplin
Best known for: The Great Dictator, City Lights, Gold Rush
Critical acclaim: Won three Oscars – two for The Circus and the Honorary Life Achievement Award.
Popular acclaim: Incomparable, iconic, a cultural phenomenon, one of the most recognizable faces of cinema. Charlie Chaplin is all of this and more – one of the true builders of Hollywood, the biggest star in the early years of the industry and of the silent movies. While Chaplin is best known for his hilarious and grotesque performances in comedy masterpieces like Gold Rush and City Lights, perhaps his trademark role remains the greatest political satire of all time – The Great Dictator.
7. Peter O’Toole
Best known for: Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, The Ruling Class
Critical acclaim: Nominated the stunning eight times for Oscar, but never won. He got the Life Achievement Honorary Oscar.
Popular acclaim: O’Toole will always remain in popular culture as the definitive Lawrence of Arabia – his performance so brilliant, so wholesome, so utterly spell-binding that it remains one of the greatest acting feats of all time. O’Toole presence on the screen was so powerful that all he needed to do was to stare with those blue eyes and transfix his audience – the rest was just magic. He embodied all qualities of the term legend – and lived like one.
6. Sean Connery
Best known for: Dr. No, The Hunt for the Red October, The Rock
Critical acclaim: Won an Oscar for The Untouchables; won the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Popular acclaim: If you make a list of iconic actors you cannot leave out the original James Bond. And if he was played by a certain Scottish actor with unmistakable voice and accent – it would be a blasphemy.
The name is Connery, Sean Connery. One of the most revered and accomplished actors of all time, a titanic presence in every scene he appears, a womanizer with impeccable style, Connery is everything you would expect from a movie star. And from a 007, to be honest.
5. Robert De Niro
Best known for: The Godfather Part 2, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Heat, Goodfellas, Casino
Critical acclaim: Won 2 Oscars – for Raging Bull and for The Godfather; a recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille award.
Popular acclaim: Robert De Niro is considered by many to be one of the two greatest active actors today (alongside friend and colleague Al Pacino). He has so many legendary roles under his belt that his iconic status is beyond any reasonable doubt. A trademark gangster, a sociopathic Vietnam war veteran or a boxing heavyweight world champion – you name it, De Niro has played it.
4. Al Pacino
Best known for: Scarface, The Godfather trilogy, Serpico, And Justice for All, Heat, Scent of a Woman
Critical acclaim: He won his single Oscar for Scent of a Woman; a recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille award and four Golden Globe Awards. One of the very few actors who has achieved the Grand Slam of acting – Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy and Tony awards.
Popular acclaim: Make a random survey on the street about the greatest actor of all time and the name Al Pacino will appear more often than any other. Pacino arguably had the strongest career start in movie history when in a short span he appeared in The Godfather, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. Even if his career had ended in 1975 he would still have been one of the legends of cinema. But instead he continued to steamroll the industry with titanic performances of sheer genius that leave us fans in awe. Thank you, Godfather!
3. Jack Nicholson
Best known for: The Postman Always Rings Twice, As Good As It Gets, Chinatown, The Departed, Batman
Critical acclaim: One of only two male actors, who have won three Oscars (the other is Daniel Day-Lewis) – for As Good As It Gets, Terms of Endearment and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Popular acclaim: There is no need to evaluate the career of an actor that has won three Oscars and was nominated nine more times. But beyond these stunning numbers there is one simple fact – there is no way you can forget his performance in a movie. His acting is so funny, brutal, believable, ironic – all the ingredients to turn him into an icon.
2. Marlon Brando
Best known for: The Godfather Part One, Apocalypse Now, A Streetcar Named Desire, Last Tango in Paris
Critical Acclaim: Won two Oscars – for The Godfather and On the Waterfront.
Popular acclaim: There can hardly be a better example for an iconic appearance in a movie than Brando’s monstrous role as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. For the whole duration of the film the action is almost a one-man show, inspired by the impeccable Martin Sheen, who delivers a larger-than-life performance. But then Brando appears in the last fifteen minutes of the movie and all you can think about is his maniacally calm voice and completely inhuman attitude.
Oh yes, and by the way he also played in The Godfather and A Streetcar Named Desire – two of the most iconic movies of all time. Enough said!
1. Clint Eastwood
Best known for: Unforgiven, Dirty Harry, A Fistful of Dollars
Critical acclaim: Won four Oscars, but all of them in the role of a director and producer.
Popular acclaim: Eastwood might not have the acting range of Pacino or Nicholson, but his macho aura and tense, speechless, menacing presence on the screen is unrivaled. He is the ultimate movie icon – a spaghetti western legend, the heir of John Wayne, Dirty Harry. Arguably the most respected actor in Hollywood, Eastwood is the living bridge between epochs in the history of cinema, the most iconic actor of our age.
