12. Haing S. Ngor - The Killing Fields
The Killing Fields is another of cinema history's great movies about the crimes against humanity carried out by dictators and tyrants, focusing on perhaps one of the most unspeakable genocides since the Second World War, when Pol Pot's regime slaughtered millions of Cambodians during the 1970s. Based on the experiences of The New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg, who visited Cambodia at the time when the titular massacres were just getting underway, The Killing Fields is a powerful and disturbing evocation of the forced labour and murder under the Khmer Rouge. Haing S. Ngor plays Schanberg's translator Pran, effectively stealing the movie from under the nose of his co-star Sam Waterson particularly as his latent humanity comes to dominate the narrative in the final act. Having never acted before, Ngor came to the attention of director Roland Joffe at a wedding party in Los Angeles - in spite of his complete lack of acting experience he was more than qualified for the role. Ngor spent four years of his life toiling in the actual killing fields of Cambodia before escaping to Thailand.