10 Greatest Actors Alive (And Currently Working)

No run mentioned so far is as good as the one Joaquin Phoenix has been on of late. Starting with 2010’s I’m Still Here—in which Phoenix convinced people he’d gone crazy by pretending to have given up acting to pursue a career in rap—Phoenix has subsequently appeared in The Master, The Immigrant, Her, and Inherent Vice; each one a classic, each performance career defining it its own right.

An actor who carefully chooses his roles, Phoenix rarely appears in anything that could be deemed as filler or fluff, and his filmography is the testament of an actor who takes his art seriously. His is an erratic nature, and his performance technique ranges from the subtle (Her), to the sedated (Inherent Vice) to the downright insane (The Master). Phoenix also boasts the most expressive face in cinema, with darting, aqueous, blue eyes and a distinctive scarred-lip that seems to take on a different meaning depending on which character he is playing.

The current muse of both Paul Thomas Anderson and James Gray, Phoenix is perhaps the best example of a ‘director’s actor’ on this list.

See Him In: The Master: where he manages to somehow not get out-acted by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Some feat, that.