5. Ryan Reynolds - Buried (2010)
In his early career, Ryan Reynolds was no doubt best known for his role in the hit TV show
2 Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, and followed up with a string of memorable roles in comedy films, namely
Van Wilder: Party Liaison and
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, while serving as comic relief in big-budget vampire flick
Blade: Trinity. Reynolds began to grab our attention when he started to star in classier efforts like John August's
The Nines, a tri-partite role proving the actor could be flexible and versatile when a meaty role commanded it. Similary, his turn in the romantic drama
Definitely, Maybe proved him capable of reining the chuckles in when the right role asked him to. It all changed when he starred in Rodrigo Cortes'
Buried, a fiendish and unsettling thriller about a man, Paul Conroy, who wakes up to find himself buried alive in a coffin. How much the film demanded of Reynolds cannot be understated; we never leave the coffin even for a second, such that the film lives or dies by his performance, and there's no questioning the fact that he knocked it out of the park. Through phone calls to officials on the outside and his own family, Reynolds conveys the absolute helplessness of being buried alive, and when left to his own devices, is no less effective, panting and wheezing just as many of us were in the cinema while we watched it.