20 Most Intense Movie Performances Of All Time

1. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) - The Shining

It's hard to say much about Jack Nicholson's flayed nerve turn as writer turned psychopath Jack Torrance in The Shining that hasn't been said myriad times before. He's almost a walking meme, thanks to that shot of him peering through his own axe-wound, but focusing only on one moment would be way too reductive and a disservice to the performance as a whole.

But that's how captivating the performance is - it immediately lends itself to those memorable flashpoints, so it's somewhat inevitable.

Torrance's descent into madness from a seemingly "normal" starting point is one of the most compelling character arcs of all time. It is a complete transformation that impacts everything about him, from the way he moves to his speech and the success of it all comes down to Nicholson's delivery. He starts off as a victim of his own haunting, but by the end he's a tour de force of dangerous delusion and psychosis, and while Stephen King claimed he was too close to crazy to begin with, it's just not correct to criticise.

Torrance's anxiety at the beginning works to underpin his arc far better than any other decision Nicholson could have made. And anyway, authors are always too close to their own characters to really comment.

Which other intense performances belong on this list? Share your favourites below in the comments thread.