5. Glengarry Glen Ross - "How do you know I made it up?"
One of the best ensemble dramas ever with Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin (in his career-best role) all threatening to steal the limelight. However, it is Spacey as estate agent office manager John Williamson who provides some of the most astonishingly effective acting in the film. Williamson is put upon and derided by the macho agents in the office as incompetent and clueless, there only to provide an outlet for their frustration. Towards the end of the film, he lies to a customer with cold feet, claiming this cheque had already been cashed before a burglary at the office, thus bringing the deal crashing down in flames. Ace salesman Ricky Roma and the slimy Shelley turn on him, before Shelley goes too far and inadvertently lets slip that it was he who had burgled the cheques and leads. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wRLWM_m5wQ The range of Spacey's performance in an eight minute scene is tremendous. He goes from silent fury as Roma tears into him, to blank embarrassment as the hated Shelley mocks him, to astonishment and then steely determination as the thief is revealed-all with barely any dialogue. The best actors act with their eyes and subtle facial expressions; Spacey perfectly encapsulates an introverted, calculated character running through a gauntlet of emotions without ever resorting to the extravagancies that lesser actors would.