10. Donald Sutherland - JFK
Oliver Stone's paranoid masterpiece JFK has many great performances in it from one of the best casts ever assembled, but the standout ultimately comes from the perpetually underrated Donald Sutherland. As X, an informant spilling some beans to Kevin Costner's DA Jim Garrison, Sutherland is utterly commanding in his few minutes on screen. Always one of our best actors, even though it's just one scene it has become the role I think of when I think of Sutherland. It's always great to see (and I'm sure for the actor to play) the guy with all the answers in the middle of the conspiracy. Hell, The X-Files became one of my favorite TV shows by banking on that feeling. But Sutherland really nails everything possible about this role to make it the definitive "guy with all the answers" role in my mind.
9. Samuel L. Jackson - Out of Sight
Really just a cameo, barely even a scene, but at the end of Steven Soderbergh's great Out of Sight, Sam Jackson comes in to join George Clooney's Jack Foley on the way to prison. Jackson underplays his role in a way that it unusual for him, and I love it. I love it for Jackson's work, and for what it means to the movie. Clooney is being taken to prison, but Jackson's character has broken out of prison repeatedly. Jennifer Lopez's US Marshall subtly smiles from the front seat as the men talk and get to know each other. Jackson's character doesn't know it, but this is the start of his friendship with Clooney, whom he will help break out of prison, and who Lopez can then chase after again, continuing their bizarre romance. It's one of my favorite movies, and even though the scene isn't in Elmore Leonard's book, Scott Frank's script and Jackson's way with dialog make it feel like it jumped out of Leonard's mind.
8. Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese wasn't supposed to be in Taxi Driver, but when the cast actor couldn't make it, Scorsese slipped in out of necessity. I'm thankful he did because Scorsese could've actually been a wonderful actor if the whole directing thing didn't work out. His character in Taxi Driver is the only person in the movie who leaves Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle feeling uncomfortable. Usually it's Travis who makes others feel this way, but when Scorsese's angry husband has Travis take him to see his wife cheating on him, and proceeds to talk uninterrupted about how he's going to kill her, gruesomely, with a .44 Magnum, Travis stays silent. Scorsese makes such a disgusting impact on us as viewers that I think we actually stay with Travis through his descent into madness because we have seen that Travis isn't even the worst of people out there. It's a remarkable performance that has always stuck with me, even if sometimes I would prefer that it didn't.
7. Billy Crystal - The Princess Bride
Honestly, this entry could just be a quotation of the great lines that Crystal delivers from one of the best scripts in cinema history. But rather than just quote, let me talk about how terrific Crystal is as Miracle Max. I would say that he keeps Max from being a cartoon, but the movie itself is so entrenched in its fairy tale-ness that it's fine even if you think Crystal does become cartoonish in his sort of fantasy Catskills comedian role. It fits with the movie. Crystal creates this terrific character that we're introduced to 2/3's of the way through the movie. Thanks to Crystal, and William Goldman's script, we know exactly who this guy is, and we love him. There could've been a whole movie just about Max and we would've lapped it up. And even though this is overall one of the funniest movies ever made, Miracle Max is most people's favorite part. Whether he's championing mutton lettuce and tomato sandwiches, wishing good luck storming the castle, or trying to define what "to blave" means, Max may be the standout character in The Princess Bride and he's only in one scene.
6. The Pale Man - Pan's Labyrinth
One of the most iconic scenes of the 2000’s, cinemas greatest fairy tale has its most recognizable villain in just this one scene, but it’s a doozy. He never says a word, but even before he pops those eyeballs into his hands you know you’re in for maybe the great monster in movie history. Referencing other great children devouring villains like the Krampus (sort of the anti-Santa Claus) or the mythical Cronos, who ate his children so that they didn’t replace him, The Pale Man attacks as our hungry heroine Ofelia passes through his buffet of food. She eats only a grape, but that’s enough for him to wobbly chase after her with intent to make her his dinner. It’s a wonderfully terrifying scene in one of my favorite movies.
5. Alec Baldwin - Glengarry Glen Ross
One of the most famous speeches in the movies is this "Always be closing" speech from Alec Baldwin to the desperate real estate salesmen in James Foley's movie version of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize winning play Glengarry Glen Ross. Now, I've never seen the play, but apparently Baldwin's speech isn't in it. It was written specifically for Baldwin, specifically for the movie. Strange that it wasn't in the play, because it's in the opening of the movie and Baldwin's presence lingers over the entire film. "First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is, you're fired." Baldwin's barely contained anger, condescension, and disbelief at the men to whom he's giving the speech sear this scene into our brains. His command of Mamet's language is mesmerizing. The contents of the speech are kind of like the "fuck you" version of a "let's go get 'em!" type of speech you'd see from a coach in a sports movie. It's pretty depressing if you really look at it. These guys are not great salesmen, they mostly don't know it, but Baldwin does and he has no patience for them. He even closes with the not so rah-rah line of "I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to, they asked me for a favor. I said, the real favor, follow my advice and fire your fucking ass because a loser is a loser." It is endlessly parodied and referenced, and without Jack Donaghy would’ve been the best thing Alec Baldwin ever did as an actor. As is, it's one of the best one scene characters ever.
4. Chris Sarandon - Dog Day Afternoon
Hilarious, heartbreaking, beautiful and painfully sad at its core, Chris Sarandon’s scene as Al Pacino’s pre-op transsexual lover Leon in Dog Day Afternoon is like a distillation of the movie itself. And that's because Sarandon conveys frustration, love, confusion, and all while feeling emotionally and physically fragile. You laugh and cry during their phone conversation, and that's because of the perfect acting from Sarandon and Pacino. Sarandon actually made so much of an impact on me that I didn't even realize he's only in this one scene until I was doing some research for making this list. He deservedly was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and would go on to be known to my generation as the cowardly Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride (as well as the voice of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas) but the best work of career was this one scene on the phone with Al Pacino.
3. John Carroll Lynch - Zodiac
John Carroll Lynch has long been one of our best character actors, whether he was playing Marge Gunderson’s husband in Fargo or Drew Carey’s cross dressing brother on The Drew Carey Show. But his crowning achievement as an actor is his controlled, intelligent, exceedingly creepy turn in David Fincher’s Zodiac. As our best bet as who the Zodiac killer was, there are so many signs that point to his character even if they’re ultimately not enough for a conviction. But Lynch is commanding. He’s toying with the cops when they come interview him as a possible suspect. It’s a scene that must be seen, especially in he context of the movie. He's playing with fire, and he knows it, but he likes it. You can see his arrogance that he feels like he's walking up to the edge of the cliff but he's going to be fine. He's in total control of the situation. We all think know it was him, but like Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, we can’t prove it. Lynch actually pops back up at the end of the movie, in the final scene, but he doesn't have any dialog so I'm counting him as only being in this one interrogation scene.
EDIT: it has been brought to my attention that Lynch is actually in more than just the interrogation scene that I didn't remember. I'm still keeping him on the list, but he doesn't ultimately qualify. Sigh...
2. Robin Wright and Jason Isaacs - Nine Lives
Only one scene, only one shot, and Robin Wright went from "that lady that was Princess Buttercup and Forrest Gump's Jenny" to "she's one of our best actresses" in my mind. Though she wouldn't really start getting her due until House of Cards, it was all here that Wright really got me. Nine Lives is a movie made up of 9 shorts, all a single take. It's a great movie, but the early section with Robin Wright and Jason Isaacs as two former lovers is the highlight. Damien and Diana. They run into each other in a grocery store after many years since they were together. Both married, thinking they've moved on, she's pregnant. They make small talk and go their separate ways, but he comes back to tell her he still thinks about her. The emotional dominos fall from there. The two actors are astounding in the piece, trying to put on their happy faces so that the other doesn't see how much they still care. Both of them unsure whether they want to say what they're feeling, or just leave it at the pleasantries. They love their spouses, but hint at things that happened in the past, old connections and old wounds that they'd both love to tend to. "We're still 'Damian and Diana'. And we always will be." he says. Wright and Isaacs are amazing in the piece, both with the dialog and in communicating wordlessly their thoughts and emotions. She may be best known as Claire Underwood from House of Cards, and he best known as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, but this is the best work either of them have ever done.
1. Christopher Walken - Pulp Fiction
In the years since Pulp Fiction, Walken has become a parody of himself. Although he’s still a talented actor, once he embraced his comedic side he seemingly stopped playing much drama at all and enjoyed his biggest successes. Thankfully, the reason his work in Pulp Fiction tops this list is because he plays all of the sides of himself as he tells a child Butch the story of his father's gold watch. Not sure how he wanted the scene to play completely, Quentin Tarantino had Walken shoot it three times, once very serious, once kind of middle of the road, and once very goofy. The setting of the scene of Butch’s family legacy, followed by the description of the hell of Vietnam, only to resolve in the hilarity of a succession of guys hiding a gold watch in their asses, is really one of the best scenes in movie history. His delivery of these lines still holds their full power. The serious stuff works, and we're reminded of Walken's talent as a dramatic actor, then the comedy comes in and Walken is hysterical. This performance is full of that great Walken comedy, and still gets a huge laugh from me every time I watch it, even now almost 25 years later. But mostly it works because it hits all of the bases: drama, comedy, and it's a wonderfully engaging story told by a tremendous actor.
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