15 Most Powerful Movie Performances Of All Time
The ones that really made you feel it.
As with all things, ideas about what constitutes great acting have varied over the years. There was a time when all any actor needed to do was show up clean shaven and well dressed with nicely combed hair, then deliver all his lines in a nice clear voice whilst standing up straight, and he'd be proclaimed a matinee idol. Likewise, all any actress had to was look as pretty as a picture and melt in the leading man's arms, and everyone was happy.
There's plenty to be said for that simple, non-threatening style of performance; sometimes that's all the role requires, and all the audience expect. However, it's also fair to say that most actors crave roles which enable them to go to places of far greater intensity and emotion; roles which will challenge them as performers, and by extension challenge their audience, taking all parties beyond their comfort zone into altogether more heightened states.
Not all of the performances that deserve to be considered the most powerful are Oscar winners, or even Oscar contenders, but since when was this a prerequisite for a performance being memorable? These are performances that sear themselves into the viewer's consciousness; once seen, they are never forgotten.
Opinions will inevitably vary, but there can be little debate that every one of them stands the test of time.
15. Robin Williams - Dead Poets Society (1989)
Would the words 'carpe diem' be so well known in contemporary popular culture without Dead Poets Society? It seems doubtful.
Williams gave surely his finest dramatic performance as the idealistic teacher John Keating, who makes it his life mission to open the eyes and the minds of the young men at a conservative boarding school at the dawn of the 1960s. It's a role that enabled Williams to flex the comedic muscles for which he will always be remembered, but simultaneously allowed him to display a sensitivity and intelligence that didn't always shine through elsewhere.
While we learn little of Keating outside the classroom (ultimately the students are the film's central characters, not him), his classes are unforgettable, stirring the teens to think for themselves, oppose conformity and question authority: lessons of value to all, young and old alike. And when the boys stand on their desks to salute him in the final scene (which has an added poignancy since Williams' death), who in the audience doesn't want to do likewise?