1. Anthony Hopkins (Odin, Starting in Thor)
Hopkins is the best actor ever to have done a Marvel film, and maybe just the best actor, period. He went from Shakespeare to a glorious run of great performances to winning a Best Actor Oscar for 24 minutes of screentime in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, in which he quickly and firmly established Dr. Hannibal Lecter as our greatest screen villain.
After many years of parts that occasionally traded on his prestige — including in the Thor films — he rolled up his sleeves for the greatest acting of his career in 2020’s The Father, in which he is sympathetic, endearing, charismatic and captivating as an 80ish man with dementia. The award won him his second Best Actor Oscar, three decades after the one for Silence of the Lambs.
If you’re about to Google who can match him in terms of Oscar wins, let me save you the trouble: Of living actors, he is one of only three — along with Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson — to have two Best Actor Oscars. (Nicholson has a third for Best Supporting.) Daniel Day-Lewis has them all beat with an astonishing three Best Actor Oscars. Frances McDormand has an incredible three Best Actress Oscars.
But McDormand, Hanks, Nicholson, and Day-Lewis have never done a superhero film. Maybe you think they’re too high-minded or artistically pure to put on capes, but I think a major part of Hopkins’ excellence is way of conveying depth and elegance even while projecting to the masses. Hopkins is all the greater because he refuses to be a protected museum display, secure in his legacy, and instead takes commercial and artistic risks.
Main image: Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder.
Share:
