4. Anthony Hopkins
Legend would have you believe that Sir Anthony Hopkins best performance is in The Silence Of The Lambs (1991), the role for which he won a lead actor Oscar despite having roughly 16 minutes of screen time. He is great in Lambs, and though time (and Mads Mikkelsen in particular) have perhaps slightly lessened that performances status, it still remains a classic of suspense cinema. His actual finest performance is in Oliver Stones (him again) Nixon (1996), that Greek Tragedy of a film which saw Hopkins embody the spirit and psyche of Richard M. Nixon without really looking or sounding too much like him. It is one of the greatest performances in all of cinema, and worth remembering when the temptation to lambast Hopkins filmography post-05 swells up. It hasnt been great though, and roles in Fracture (2006), The Wolfman (2010), and The Rite (2011) have unsuccessfully tried to riff off the characters he played better in the 90s. You have to go all the way back to Steven Spielbergs Amistad in 97 to find a true Hopkins performance of note, though some might have it hes good as Odin in the Thor franchise as well (but he's really just coasting).