10 Actors Who Gave Their Best & Worst Performance In The Same Year

Two 2001 movies. Both starring Josh Hartnett. Both loosely based on real-life events. Both with Hartnett playing a member of the military.

Despite those similarities, it's safe to say that Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor are two vastly different pictures when it comes to the quality of these '01 offerings.

As SSG Matt Eversmann, Hartnett gave the best performance of his career in Black Hawk Down... even if your writer's bias may often lean towards 30 Days of Night. Based on the US military's 1993 raid in Mogadishu, Somalia, the film itself is phenomenal and wound up taking home two Academy Awards. For Hartnett, his burgeoning reputation as one of Hollywood's hottest rising stars was solidified here, with the picture marking him out as a genuine top tier talent.

It was for being 'one of Hollywood's hottest rising stars', though, that Michael Bay was so eager to sign Josh Hartnett up for his Pearl Harbor - which released six months prior to Black Hawk Down.

Painfully long, ludicrously historically inaccurate, brimming with excruciating dialogue, bizarrely weaving a love triangle into the real 7 December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, and anchored by two dismal performances from Hartnett and Ben Affleck, Bay's picture was universally panned upon its release.

Whilst Black Hawk Dawn would show Josh Hartnett as his best, his performance as Pearl Harbor's USAAC Captain Danny Walker was the actor at his worst.