Actors

Actor's Showcase: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Actor's Showcase: Heaven Can Wait

Actor's Showcase: Holiday

Actor's Showcase: Of Mice and Men

Actor's Showcase: Paths of Glory

Actor's Showcase: The Heiress

Actor's Showcase: A Letter to Three Wives

After a well documented and extended courtship with drugs, Downey has emerged miraculously 20 years later as the strong and now extremely prolific actor his peers always knew he could be.

Throughout his career his talent has shone through, and now, unhindered by vices, broken through, still at the same high level it always was.

Deservedly Oscar-nominated for his exceptional performance in Chaplin back in the early 90s, he has acted in surely every genre, amongst them the 'Brat Pack' movies of the 80s, Shakespeare's Richard III opposite Ian McKellen, and the notorious Natural Born Killers. Excellent at comedy and with a very decent singing voice, for this reason snapped up by TV show Ally McBeal to save its ratings, which he did.

With a kind of mesmerising, murmured, fixed-eye-contact acting style, similar to James Spader, this itself was the focus of his role in 2006's excellent Fur.

Actor's Showcase: Chaplin

Although his name was made starring in the 70s blockbusters Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws, to me, the earlier American Graffiti is the film which really showcases Richard Dreyfuss's charm and appeal.

After seeing this quiet little movie, his later sometimes less subtle performances suddenly contain this same engaging charm, particularly The Goodbye Girl and Mr Holland's Opus. For comic relief, 1987's Tin Men and Stakeout are also fair.

Dreyfuss recently declared he shall retire from screen acting, although with luck not from the stage.

Actor's Showcase: American Graffiti

Type-casting. What most actors wanting to make it big, or just be taken seriously are wary of. But, I have seen a good many films featuring Edward Everett Horton and I'm yet to see him play anything but the same character.

Dull viewing then? Well, no, not really, because Horton plays this character so very well.

And what is this One Character? Typically he is the bumbler, the eternally-confused companion to the confident or over-confident star. He should be the voice of reason in such a partnership, but his films are comedies, his lack of logic and Private Jones type reactions merely add to the chaos.

It is the charm of his character's mannerisms that adds to the films. In his Astaire outings, Here Comes Mr Jordan and the stylish-for-its-time Trouble in Paradise, his role is most typical.

However, in Holiday, Horton is a very dumbed-down version of himself. Same mannerisms but with a subtle touch. We focus on the humour in the script and in his body language, and this combination makes it a wonderful performance in a truly great film.

Actor's Showcase: Holiday

Actor's Showcase: Another Thin Man

Actor's Showcase: Patton

Actor's Showcase: A Star Is Born

Actor's Showcase: My Darling Clementine

Actor's Showcase: My Man Godfrey

A talent widely regarded as a 'cad', both in his roles and also in real life. Sanders was a very intelligent man, dissatisfied and irritated by many things in life, happy to play up to the image of The Cad he portrayed if that is what the public expected of him and if it amused him in the process.

It was a role he came to own. His acting talent, demeanour and particularly his voice suited the role to a tee. Comparing his performance in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent with the later, more typical examples demonstrate this.

Finally awarded with an Oscar in 1950 for the embodiment of all his previous characters: All About Eve's Addison DeWitt, a sharp-tongued, witty, sly cad, indifferent to Marilyn Monroe's on-screen charms, Sanders steals the show from leading lady Bette Davis, a hard task in itself.

George Sanders was a great British talent that more people should know about.

Worth a look at his biography and his autobiography (in that order) to dispel the well publicised, and too easily swallowed 'he killed himself out of boredom' rumour, and gain a greater understanding of what moved the man.

Actor's Showcase: The Moon and Sixpence

Actor's Showcase: The Hustler

Actor's Showcase: The Big Country

Actor's Showcase: Sex, Lies and Videotape

Actor's Showcase: The Philadelphia Story