2. Robert De Niro - Taxi Driver (1976)
De Niro, again, is one of those legends who (for the first few decades of his career, at least) brought more blood, sweat and tears to every single role than many actors manage through their entire career. Almost any role from his glory days might warrant a mention here, but for sheer, unmitigated power, it has to be Taxi Driver. Not unlike Pacino's Tony Montana, De Niro's Travis Bickle has long since become a poster and T-shirt icon for arguably the wrong reasons. His is a cautionary tale of how the disenfranchised can easily swing toward dangerous extremism (a lesson many of us might do well to take heed of today). Even so, there's no denying that Bickle is in many respects an attractive character despite his obvious psychotic tendencies, and at heart he is someone who wants to do the right thing even if, to put it mildly, he doesn't go the right way about it. De Niro's ability to make the character so likeable while also being utterly terrifying is a huge part of what makes Taxi Driver so disturbing, yet so compelling.