Best drama actors (all time)

Geoffrey Roy Rush (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor and film producer. He is the youngest of the few people who have won the "Triple Crown of Acting": the Academy Award, the Primetime Emmy Award, and the Tony Award. He has...

Gary Leonard Oldman (born 21 March 1958) is an English actor, filmmaker, musician and author. He began acting in theatre in 1979, and gained his first starring film role in Meantime (1983). Oldman continued to lead a stage career,...

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, professional racing driver and team owner; he was also an environmentalist, activist, and philanthropist. He won numer...

Channing Matthew Tatum (born April 26, 1980) is an American actor, film producer, dancer, and model. Tatum made his film debut in the drama film Coach Carter (2005). His breakthrough role was in the 2006 dance film Step Up, which...

Cary Grant (born Archibald Alexander Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was an English actor who gained American citizenship in 1942. His best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), H...

Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an American screen actor whose filmography include 1940s films noir movies such as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep. Over his career he received...

Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England, and the Netherlands,...

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. She starred in a various range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period fil...

Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress. She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any perf...

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his roles in Big (1988), Philadelphia (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), Saving Private Ryan, You've Got Mail (both 199...

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, film director, producer, musician, and politician. He rose to international fame with his role as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of sp...

Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor of film, stage, and television, and a composer and painter. After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 1957, he trained at the Royal A...

Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor and film producer. He gained worldwide fame for his starring roles as Han Solo in the original Star Wars epic space opera trilogy and the title character of the Indiana Jones...

Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a retired Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Ceci...

Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor and musician whose films include musical-drama film Footloose (1984), the controversial historical conspiracy legal thriller JFK (1991), the legal drama A Few Good Men (...

Sir Ian Murray McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He is the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BIF Award, two Saturn Awards, four Drama Desk A...

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) was an English actor, singer and author. With a career spanning nearly 70 years, Lee initially portrayed villains and became best known for his role as Count Dracula...

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016) was an English actor known for playing a variety of roles on stage and screen, often as a complex antagonist. Rickman was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company i...

Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and theatre director. She has received many accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and three Br...

Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (born April 25, 1940) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is well known for playing mobsters, especially Michael Corleone in The Godfather films and Tony Montana in Scarface, and often appeared on the...

Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) was an Australian actor and director. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger left for the United States in 1998 to develop his film ca...

Julianne Moore (born Julie Anne Smith; December 3, 1960) is an American actress and children's author.

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974) is an American actor and film producer. He has been nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards, winning two, and five Academy Awards.

Meryl Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress and a three-time Academy Award winner. Streep made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville in 1971, and went on to receive a 1976 Tony Award nomination for Be...

Bryan Lee Cranston (born March 7, 1956) is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is best known for portraying Walter White in the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad, Hal in the Fox comedy series...

Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English actor. He holds both British and Irish citizenship. Born and raised in London, he excelled on stage at the National Youth Theatre, before being accepted at the...

Dame Margaret Natalie "Maggie" Smith (born 28 December 1934) is an English actress. She made her stage debut in 1952 and has had an extensive, varied career in stage, film and television spanning over sixty years. Smith has appear...

Marion Mitchell Morrison (born Marion Robert Morrison; May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director, and producer. An Academy Award-winner for True Grit (1969), Wayne was...

Joaquín Rafael Phoenix (born Joaquín Rafael Bottom, October 28, 1974), known formerly as Leaf Phoenix, is an American actor, producer, music video director, musician and activist. For his work as an artist, Phoenix has received a...

Henry Jaynes "Hank" Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American film and stage actor with a career spanning more than five decades.

Richard St John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor, singer, theatrical and song producer, film director and writer. He appeared on stage and in many films, appearing as Frank Machin in This Sporting Life,...

Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor, singer, and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as superhero, period, and romance characters. He is perhaps...

Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges (born December 4, 1949) is an American actor, singer and producer. He comes from a prominent acting family, and appeared on the television series Sea Hunt (1958–60), with his father, Lloyd Bridges and b...

Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti (born June 6, 1967) is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Cinderella Man and is also known for his roles in the films Sideways, American S...

Jeffrey Warren "Jeff" Daniels (born February 19, 1955) is an American actor, musician, and playwright. He founded a nonprofit theater company, the Purple Rose Theatre Company, in his home state of Michigan. He has performed in a n...

Ken Watanabe (渡辺 謙 Watanabe Ken, born October 21, 1959) is a Japanese actor. To English-speaking audiences, he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Ka...

Ewan Gordon McGregor (born 31 March 1971) is a Scottish actor. His first professional role was in 1993, when he won a leading role in the Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar. He is best known for his roles as heroin addict Ma...

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress, businesswoman and humanitarian. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars...

Sir Michael Caine, (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933), is a British actor and author. Caine has appeared in over 115 films. Although he uses the title Sir Michael Caine, he actually chose to be knighted as Sir Mauric...

Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after marrying Prince Rainier III, became Princess of Monaco. After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of 20, Kelly appeared...

Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. In 2007, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as psychopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. He has also known for r...

Christoph Waltz (born 4 October 1956) is an Austrian-German actor. He is best known for his works with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (...

Omar Sharif (born Michel Dimitri Chalhoub; 10 April 1932 – 10 July 2015) was an Egyptian actor. He began his career in his native country in the 1950s, but is best known for his appearances in both British and American productions...

William McChord Hurt (born March 20, 1950) is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in th...

John Holland Cazale (August 12, 1935 – March 12, 1978) was an American actor. He appeared in five films during six years that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: P...

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. He started as a stand-up comedian in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. After rising to fame as Mork in the sitcom Mork & M...

Lauren Bacall, (born Betty Joan Perske; September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014) was an American actress. Bacall began her career as a model, before making her debut as a leading lady with Humphrey Bogart in the film To Have and Have...

Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was an American actor, director, and producer of film and theater. Best known for his distinctive supporting and character roles – typically lowlifes, bullies, and misfits...

Sir Sidney Poitier, (born February 20, 1927), is a Bahamian-American actor, film director, author and diplomat. In 1964, Poitier became the first Bahamian and first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, for his...

Toshiro Mifune (April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–65) with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in such works as Rashomon, Se...