1. Jack Nicholson - Jack Torrance (The Shining)
It would seem obvious that, given the need to chart a normal man's descent into madness, you would try any other actor than Jack Nicholson, a man whose natural presence is imbued with an air of insanity from the get go. That was author Stephen King's major criticism when it came to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of his horror classic, anyway, and he was right: the point of the book is that Jack Torrance slowly descends into madness. With Nicholson in the main role, it's unclear whether or not he's supposed to have been insane to begin with. And yet viewed as an individual performance, unrelated to King's book and its own Jack Torrance, Nicholson puts in a remarkable effort - one that is still hailed today as the peak of bonafide crazy. Given that Kubrick's adaptation doesn't really hold true to its source material anyway, and merely uses it as a kind of inspiration generator, it doesn't matter as much as it would have had this been a faithful adaptation anyway. As it stands, Nicholson injects his own Torrance with a delirious edge from start to finish, and it's mesmerising to watch.
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