10 Actors Who Gave Their Best & Worst Performance In The Same Year
5. Tom Cruise - 1988
While Dusting Hoffman took home a Best Actor Academy Award for his role as Ray Babbitt in Rain Man - one of an impressive four Oscar wins for the film - so much of the heavy lifting fundamentals of this 1988 picture were done by Tom Cruise as Ray's brother Charlie.
By 1988, Cruise was hot on the back of Risky Business, Top Gun, and The Color of Money - and '88 started off extremely rough with Cocktail, before Rain Man came along and delivered The Cruise's greatest performance.
Of course, an actor with the tenure and sheer variety of credits as Tom Cruise is going to cause debate when it comes to their best performance - and some may well point to one of his Ethan Hunt outings in the Mission: Impossible series - but Rain Man was a pivotal moment in the actor's career.
As alluded to, prior to Rain Man's release, 1988 also saw Cocktail hitting cinema screens. With Cruise as a New York business student 'forced' to take a job as a barman, the film is a bit, well, naff; so much so, the movie and Cruise were both nominated for a Razzie Award.
Interestingly, Tom Cruise has since told Rolling Stone how Cocktail was "not a crowning jewel" of his career - which is polite actor chatter for "it was total dogs**t, mate".