Well it's happened. We all feared that a Top Ten Actors article would be riddled with performances of troubled-yet-talented country singers and it's only bloody happened, hasn't it? First Johnny Cash, and now Otis 'Bad' Blake (whom I'm not terribly confident is a real person) make up half of our first four entries on the list. I suppose it's quite surprising then, that despite both characters having a very similar background on the face of it, they are played out in rather stark contrast to one another. Jeff Bridges was born to be an actor. His presence is that of a man that has a thousand stories to tell, and his natural identity describes the perfect fit for any character template. He is someone that only has to change a tiny element of his persona to adapt to each role, and have that be the difference between Rooster Cogburn and Obadiah Stane. It's only to be expected then, that his Oscar-level performance in Crazy Heart was what brought this conventional, clichéd film up a few notches. Everyone knew what was gonna happen when Maggie Gyllenhaal arrived on the scene (the whole 'get-your-life-back-on-track-only-to-screw-it-up-with-one-thoughtless-move-but-find-yourself-better-for-the-experience-just-before-the-end-credits-role' storyline didn't really keep us guessing) but Bridges' deep-rooted portrayal of Blake brought a thicker level of reality to the overplayed scenario. We knew where it was heading, Otis knew where it was heading, and the best feature of the film was his gritty struggle to stop the generic freight train reaching its destination of predictability (does that make sense? - Microsoft Word Grammar Check says it makes sense ...). There are a couple of Jeff Bridges renderings that could have made it onto this list, but Crazy Heart saw him take relatively straight-forward part, and turn it into something more authentic and heartfelt - which is why I illustrate it to you now at number 7.
