best film: Magnolia. While recent viewings of Punch-Drunk Love and The Master have complicated things I’m not yet ready to yield the mantle of best PT Anderson film to either of them (the closest contender is actually There Will Be Blood and PSH isn’t in that of course). The 25th Hour, The Big Lebowski, and Boogie Nights are right there as well. PSH is essential to Magnolia. Anderson’s sprawling ensemble doesn’t dote on PSH, and his achievement isn’t on the level of Cruise’s—that’s for sure—but he’s right there after Cruise along with Robards and a few others.
best performance: The Master and the main contender is Capote (which PSH won his Academy Award for). PSH’s Lancaster Dodd is a blending of Ron L. Hubburd and Orson Welles. He’s magnetic, smart and entirely haughty. As I said when discussing Phoenix- the processing sequence between the two gifted actors is one of the greatest displays of acting in the history of cinema. Phoenix is the lead- and his performance is stronger- but PSH’s achievement in the 2012 masterpiece may be above any other actor’s yet this decade. PTA shoots heavily in close-ups, in 70mm, letting the nuance of PSH’s face and performance play out front and center. I would have no great debate with someone who opted for Capote as PSH’s single greatest achievement either. It is a total immersion– and the high-water mark (or close) of a truly gifted versatile actor.
stylistic innovations/traits: PSH is one of the 5-10 most truly gifted actors of all-time. He’s a chameleon who can disappear in a role, an accent, an embodiment of a character’s posture. PSH tragically died early from a drug overdose at age 46 but in his career he gave us 22 achievable films, was nominated for four academy awards, and was in a whopping six masterpieces. That means that from 1997 to 2002 – a total of 6 years—if you made a masterpiece there was roughly a 25% chance PSH was in it. Haha. Astounding. That said, he’s one of the harder actors to rank because for large portions of his career (this period to be specific) he’s a supporting actor, a scene-stealer—much like say Thomas Mitchell or John Cazale. However, unlike those two actors, he had big muscular leading performances along the way (Capote, The Master, Owning Mahowny, Synecdoche, New York). It makes it not only tough to rank PSH on this list (I feel good here at #24) but also tough to rank his performances. He steals scenes in one of the best comedies of all-time (The Big Lebowski) and then gives a nuanced larger performance in a weaker film opposite Meryl Streep (Doubt)—neither of which made his top 10—astounding.
directors worked with: PT Anderson (5) and this is the key collaboration… Bennett Miller (2), Minghella (2) and then once with Spike Lee, The Coen Brothers, Lumet, Mike Nichols
Top 10 Performances:
- The Master
- Capote
- Magnolia
- Synecdoche, New York
- Owning Mahowny
- Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
- The 25th Hour
- Punch Drunk Love
- Happiness
- Boogie Nights
Archiveable films
| 1992- Scent of a Woman |
| 1994- Nobody’s Fool |
| 1996- Hard Eight |
| 1997- Boogie Nights |
| 1998- Happiness |
| 1998- The Big Lebowski |
| 1999- Magnolia |
| 1999- The Talented Mr. Ripley |
| 2000- Almost Famous |
| 2002- Punch Drunk Love |
| 2002- The 25th Hour |
| 2003- Cold Mountain |
| 2003- Owning Mahowny |
| 2005- Capote |
| 2007- Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead |
| 2007- Charlie Wilson’s War |
| 2007- The Savages |
| 2008- Doubt |
| 2008- Synecdoche, New York |
| 2011- Moneyball |
| 2012- The Master |
| 2014- A Most Wanted Man |
Would’ve been even higher if he wouldn’t of died. However Tom Cruise completely steals the show in Magnolia.
The greatest male performances of all time that didn’t win an Oscar. 1)Robert De Niro-Taxi Driver 2)Al Pacino-The Godfather 3)Al Pacino-The Godfather Part 2 4)Al Pacino-Dog Day Afternoon 5)Marlon Brando-Last Tango In Paris 6)Marlon Brando-A Streeetcar Named Desire 7)Humphrey Bogart-Casablanca 8)Jimmy Stewart-Vertigo 9)Jimmy Stewart-It’s a Wonderful Life 10)Tom Cruise-Magnolia 11)Heath Ledger-Brokeback Mountain 12)Samuel L Jackson-Pulp Fiction 13)Robert Duvall-Apocalypse Now 14)James Caan-The Godfather 15)Joaquin Phoenix-The Master 16)Philip Seymour Hoffman-The Master 17)Denzel Washington-Malcolm X And somehow Rami Malek has an oscar.Very interesting that 4 actors gave 4 of the best film performances of all time working with Paul Thomas Anderson.And Paul Thomas Anderson still don’t have an oscar.He is becoming this generation’s Alfred Hitchcock.
Interesting do you have a favorite performances that weren’t even NOMINATED for an Oscar, because for me, those would be
1. Jim Carrey “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
2. Dennis Hopper “Blue Velvet”
3. Jeff Bridges “The Big Lebowski”
4. Mark Wahlberg “Boogie Nights”
5. Anthony Perkins “Psycho”
6. Adam Sandler “Punch Drunk Love”
7. Jimmy Stewart “Vertigo”
8. Gene Hackman “The Conversation”
9. Henry Fonda “12 Angry Men”
10. Sidney Poitier “A Raisin in the Sun”
If you guys are on the topic of non-Nominated performances, I will chuck in my few cents:
Humphrey Boghart (The Maltese Falcon) (1941 – Best Actor)
Jeff Bridges (Fearless) (1993 – Best Actor)
Michael Caine (Get Carter) (1971 – Best Actor)
Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) (1996 – Best Supporting Actor)
George Clooney (Out Of Sight) (1998 – Best Actor)
George Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) (2000 – Best Actor)
Brian Cox (Manhunter) (1986 – Best Supporting Actor)
Tom Cruise (Collateral) (2004 – Best Supporting Actor) (Fox was nominated, but is: a) really lead and b) not as good as Cruise)
Robert DeNiro (GoodFellas) (1990 – Best Supporting Actor)
Robert DeNiro (Heat) (1995 – Best Actor)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can) (2002 – Best Actor)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed) (2006 – Best Actor) (Was nominated for Blood Diamond, deservedly so, but he is better here)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road) (2008 – Best Actor)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island) (2010 – Best Actor)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained) (2012 – Best Supporting Actor)
Matt Dillon (Drugstore Cowboy) (1989 – Best Actor)
Robert Downey Jr. (Zodiac) (2007 – Best Supporting Actor)
Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine) (2010 – Best Actor)
Ryan Gosling (Drive) (2011 – Best Actor)
Ryan Gosling (The Place Beyond The Pines) (2013 – Best Supporting Actor)
Pam Grier (Jackie Brown) (1997 – Best Actress) (I am less familiar with the female categories, but this performance was an absolute tour-de-force and should, probably, have won, which makes it all the more shocking that it wasn’t nominated)
Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) (2001 – Best Actor)
Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler) (2014 – Best Actor)
Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) (2018 – Best Actor)
Bob Hoskins (The Long Good Friday) (1980 – Best Actor)
John Huston (Chinatown) (1974 – Best Supporting Actor)
Jeremy Irons (Dead Ringers) (1988 – Best Actor)
Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina) (2015 – Best Supporting Actor)
Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) (2013 – Best Actor) (More excusable than most, given that this was a great year for male performances)
Samuel L. Jackson (Jackie Brown) (1997 – Best Supporting Actor)
Keira Knightley (Atonement) (2007 – Best Actress)
Malcolm MacDowell (A Clockwork Orange) (1971 – Best Actor) (This is probably the No. 1 snub for me, alongside Hackman in The Conversation – the films were rewarded by the Academy, so it shocks me they snubbed these great performances)
James McAvoy (Atonement) (2007 – Best Actor) (I’m fairly sure he should have been nominated for supporting for Last King Of Scotland, too)
Matthew McConaughey (Killer Joe) (2012 – Best Actor)
Dean Martin (Rio Bravo) (1959 – Best Supporting Actor)
Viggo Mortensen (A History Of Violence) (2005 – Best Actor)
Jack Nicholson (Batman) (1989 – Best Supporting Actor) (I think the lack of a nomination has led to Nicholson’s performance being disregarded over the years, even though he is closer than many would think to Ledger and Phoenix, although not QUITE as good).
Jack Nicholson (The Departed) (2006 – Best Supporting Actor)
Clive Owen (Children Of Men) (2006 – Best Actor)
Sean Penn (Carlito’s Way) (1993 – Best Supporting Actor)
Burt Reynolds (Deliverance) (1972 – Best Supporting Actor)
Tim Robbins (The Player) (1992 – Best Actor)
Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon) (2008 – Best Actor)
Kevin Spacey (Se7en) (1995 – Best Supporting Actor) (Yes, he won this year for The Usual Suspects – but I think he gives the superior performance here. Literally no one else could have played this as well as Spacey.)
Denzel Washington (American Gangster) (2007 – Best Actor)
Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive) (2001 – Best Actress)
John Wayne (Red River) (1948 – Best Actor)
Orson Welles (Touch of Evil) (1958 – Best Actor) (This makes sense, though, as the film was disregarded upon release)
James Woods (Videodrome) (1983 – Best Actor)
Christ – I wrote too much haha
@Jeff- wow- haha. great work! thanks for sharing
Of all of these performances, Drake, which would you say is the most criminally unnominated? For me it’s gotta be Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive, I mean just WOW what a performance, but there’s a lot of other great performances here I’ll have to agree with. I’m also pretty partial to Mortensen in A History of Violence myself.
@Zane- those are great picks— Oscar Isaac maybe for me in Inside Llewyn Davis (though I may have picked Watts if you already hadn’t). Irons in Dead Ringers getting ignored is a joke too (as most of these are)
@Drake. “PSH is one of the 5-10 most truly gifted actors of all-time.” Can you elaborate?
@Finn- sure- I mean PSH is below like John Wayne, Marcello Mastroianni, and a few others because look at their resumes and perhaps screen presence… but if I were to do this list based strictly on who I thought the most talented actor (just being a gifted actor) was it would be different in spots and one of them would be moving PSH up
As I read the mention of There Will Be Blood in the beginning paragraph of this page, a bizarre notion entered my head: what if Philip Seymour Hoffman had played Daniel Plainview? Do you think think it is a conceivable idea? He is nearly as talented as Day-Lewis, and his common collaborations with Anderson make it plausible that he could have been cast. If two people were each to describe the characters of Lancaster Dodd and Daniel Plainview, they’d both reach something along the lines of “egotistical powerful man who falsely, manipulatively portrays himself as helpful.” Although PSH exudes a different persona than DDL (by the way, it’s odd that three of the cinema geniuses most often initialized, PSH, DDL, and PTA, are connected. This is something that happens, as Magnolia’s Stanley would say.) and looks rather different, I believe he is enough of a chameleon to perform the personality of the character in a relatively similar way. He is capable of most, though probably not all, of the intensity required for the role.
Would his performance in the role have surpassed Casey Affleck’s outstanding work in The Assassination of Jesse James as the best of 2007? Perhaps so. Would we be viewing PTA-PSH as one of the best auteur-actor partnerships, near the level of Scorsese-De Niro, Kurosawa-Mifune, Hitchcock-Stewart, Fellini-Masina or -Mastroianni, Herzog-Kinski, Griffith-Gish, and the countless others? I find it likely. Hypothetically, if Hoffman were to have acted in There Will Be Blood and given a performance equal to the Day-Lewis performance that occurred in actuality, where might he land on the list? Of course, I don’t expect that his work in the film would have quite reached that level.
@Graham- I love this- “PSH exudes a different persona than DDL”. Whenever I watch There Will Be Blood I think of someone else (maybe PSH– maybe someone else- (Casey Affleck would actually be great)) in the Paul Dano role- I never thought of it this way here. I’m sure that 1) PSH would’ve been great 2) it would have been different and 3) I’m glad we have what we have (no offense to PSH).
the PTA/PSH collaboration is an important one even if PSH never gave the single best performance in a PTA film (that’s no insult to PSH– but a compliment to people like Cruise, Phoenix, Sandler).
As to where any actor would land on this list if they had given a performance the level of DDL in There Will Be Blood? I mean I consider it to be one of the best performances (like we’re talking THE best — my short list of contenders may include Phoenix, Natalie Portman in Black Swan) of the 21st century. So yeah pushing him up 5-10 slots at least doesn’t seem crazy– maybe even cracking the top 10
I agree with everything you have said here.
I admire Philip Seymour Hoffman. But I thought his oscar nominations for Doubt and Charlie Wilson War was weak. He is good in them. But there are so many other films he was better.
@Anderson- You’ll find this is often the case with the academy awards
@Anderson – I stopped watching the Oscars when The Kings Speech beat the Social Network, while there are probably worse picks that one was my final “I’m done with the oscars” ha
@James Trapp- Yeah I mean I hope they get it right, and sometimes they do– but I’m also done getting upset over the misses at this point
Owning Mahowny is an underrated one. It is perhaps the best portrayal of a compulsive gambler I’ve ever seen on screen. It doesn’t have a lot of over the top dramatic scenes which is probably why it’s not as widely known as some of his other performances but PSH is amazing in the way he captures the internalization of a gambler who has no control over his addiction.
@James Trapp- I’m a big admirer of his work in this one as well
Drake,
I know it’s difficult to predict these but how high do you think PSH ceiling was if he doesn’t pass away at only 46?
Top 15? Top 10? He was incredibly prolific and showing no signs of slowing down before his passing away. He play a crazy range of characters, think of his meek characters from say The 25th Hour or Magnolia compared to his hilarious and brash performance in Punch Drunk Love. He was just as capable of playing introverts, think Owning Mahowny and extroverts like his character from the Master.
He was also a master (no pun intended) of mixing humor into many of his roles and was just as comfortable in dramas as he was in comedies.
He had no real weaknesses in his legacy; his filmography is deep and loaded with Masterpieces as noted on this page, he had incredible range, and was comfortable in many genres.
@James Trapp- Very sad to think about. Just revisited Almost Famous this past weekend and PSH’s scenes are just so special. What’s clear is if he had kept on working (and he worked) he would have made a real run at the all-time most archiveable films. I have 22 films on his list right now and I think he’s clearly in the 30s by now in 2022 with the likes of John Wayne, Ward Bond (in a lot of the same ones as Wayne) Willem Dafoe, Robert De Niro and a few others. It’s tough to predict when another role like The Master would have come along and those are the ones that ultimately move the needle the most on the rankings list. But top 10-15 does not seem crazy at all.
@Drake – I completely forgot about his role in Almost Famous, got to revisit that one sometime soon.
Another thing about PSH is that because he wasn’t the classic dashing lead male type of actor
I don’t think he would have had trouble finding roles as he aged. I just revisited Before the
Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) the other day and he was absolutely incredible, particularly
the scene with Albert Finney, who plays his father. It reminded me somewhat of the scene in
Five Easy Pieces (1970) where the Jack Nicholson character has a heart to heart with his
father. While it may not be one of his best films it was an eye opener for me when I saw for
the 1st time as the first couple of movies I saw PSH in were roles when he played meek
characters (Magnolia, Boogie Nights, 25th Hour, The Big Lebowski) so watching him play such
an arrogant, manipulative character was very different.