9. Jeff Bridges - True Grit
An easy way to tell if somebody's good at their profession is to see if they make their job look easy. This is especially true of acting, where the actor's primary objective is to make us believe that they're somebody else. The trademark of a genius performance is when an actor can make us forget that we're watching an actor at all. Jeff Bridges' portrayal of U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in 2010's True Grit is such a performance. It must take a lot of guts to step into the boots of an icon. Bridges found himself in this position when he agreed to portray Cogburn, a role which film legend John Wayne made famous (and won an Oscar for) in 1969. As wonderful as the Duke's performance was, however, Bridges does him one better. In the 1969 film, we're aware that the "one-eyed fat man" we see on the screen isn't an Old West lawman but John Wayne, one of the greatest movie stars of all time. While that's not really the Duke's fault (it's a handicap that comes with being a superstar), Bridges improves on Duke's performance by making us believe that we're watching a real-life marshal on a manhunt. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but every time I watch True Grit, I find myself thinking not of Jeff Bridges but Rooster Cogburn. Had Bridges won the Best Actor Oscar in 2011, he would have joined the elite group of actors who have won Oscars two years in a row (Bridges had won the Best Actor Oscar the previous year for his performance in 2009's Crazy Heart). Unfortunately, the award went to Colin Firth for his performance in The King's Speech. Firth's performance was good, but it wasn't as involving as Bridges'.