7. Jean Claude Van Damme in Double Impact (1991)
What list of the best one-actor-two-character performances could ever be complete without a Jean Claude Van Damme entry? And to double his chances, the Muscles from Brussels even made TWO films in which he played the twin of himself: Double Impact and Maximum Risk. But we'll concern ourselves with Double Impact, the far superior of the two. In Double Impact, Van Damme plays Alex and Chad, twins who were separated from birth and set on very different paths to lead very different livesin which they both became martial arts masters and ended up in Hong Kong. It's not a great movie. They're not great characters. And Van Damme's certainly not a great actor. And yet there is still something undeniably great about watching this movie on a Saturday afternoon, rain pounding the family room windows, popcorn making its final rotations in the microwave, blanket keeping your toesies warm, and your honey by your side. Yep, great.
6. Armie Hammer in The Social Network (2010)
The future Lone Ranger himself made his mainstream cinema debut in The Social Network, playing the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. The real-life twins found themselves at odds with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (played in the movie by the ever-pissy-and-annoying Jesse Eisenberg) over what they claimed to be intellectual property theft. Mr. Hammer was lauded by many critics for his two-faced portrayal of the Winklevosses and slammed by others for his stiff and wooden performance. Stiff and wooden? Well, they were entitled Gentlemen of Harvard, after all, so just how loose and lifelike was Hammer supposed to be?