10. Tom Hanks - Cast Away
20th Century FoxToo much time in your own company can be a very bad thing. Without someone to talk to it's only a matter of time before you end up talking to yourself, surely one of the first signs that your isolation might be sending you mad. And if you find yourself stranded on a desert island, the chances of this happening are going to increase day by day. This is what happens to Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in Cast Away - a FedEx employee sent to Malaysia to fix a problem, Noland finds himself flying through a violent storm and ends up crashing in the ocean and drifting on the inflatable life-raft until he floats onto a deserted island. It doesn't take him long to realise that he's got no chance of breaching the waves and escaping, and the island becomes his home for several years, with nothing but a Wilson Sporting Goods volleyball with a face drawn on it fpr company. Hanks - naturally dominating the screen for pretty much the entirety of the movie - portrays Noland's inexorable breakdown as the days, months and years pass with subtlety and humanity, his ordinariness allowing his character to serve as a vehicle for audience sympathy. It's a sometimes darkly comic performance which Hanks reigns in (others could have easily overacted the part), and aside from minor quibbles about product placement the result is engaging and moving.