10. Brad Pitt, 2006-2009
The Streak: Babel, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Burn After Reading, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Inglourious Basterds. After years without a big hit outside of the Ocean's series, Brad Pitt reminded everybody that he truly can act - as well as being a bankable star - with this run of films, each one presenting a different quality within his eclectic range. Starting with Babel - in which Pitt gives a fraught turn as an everyman tourist - and ending with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds - his least impressive turn in the streak but still a good one in what might be Tarantino's masterpiece - Pitt enjoyed a three year spell of greatness, interrupting it only to appear in Ocean's Thirteen, which is coasting but hardly enough to break the streak. Within the streak Pitt shows off his impressive comedy chops in The Coens' Burn After Reading - one of the great comedic performances by a major star in recent years - and also his tempered, pensive side, wonderfully displayed in his role as Jesse James in Andrew Domink's The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Best of all, though, is his Oscar nominated turn as the eponymous Benjamin Button in David Fincher's masterful The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Playing a man who ages in reverse, Pitt excels at showing the differing stages of a life fully lived, never more so than in the small, blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of him in his prime, roaring past on a motorcycle (see above) to give us the most Brando-esque moment in recent cinema history.