Jeremy Irons: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

4. Father Gabriel - The Mission (1986)

That rare movie which sees Jeremy Irons in a wholly good guy capacity, the actor's dedicated performance in Roland Joffe's underrated classic The Mission remains a high point of his career (even if the critics didn't think much of the film at the time). As Father Gabriel, the loyal 18th-century Jesuit priest tasked with building a Guarani Indian mission deep in the jungles of Brazil, Irons successfully holds his own against one of the biggest stars of the era, Robert De Niro, and was even nominated for a Golden Globe. What most people really seem to remember about The Mission is its phenomenal musical score by Ennio Morricone, but Irons' performance is just as worthy of attention. Though he essentially plays the "straight man" to De Niro's disgraced slave trader, Irons works to make his character rich and three-dimensional. It's the sort of assured acting where you begin to believe in the character to such an extent that you forget they are merely fictional.