Great Performances: 1999

Bruce Springsteen

His E Street Band cronies had visibly aged, but when 50-year-old Springsteen charged up to the mic, he looked like he'd stepped out of a time-resistant bubble. The Boss kicked off the U.S. leg of his blockbuster tour in July with 15 nights in his native New Jersey, and set a punishingly high bar: three hours per show (with barely an intermission), through which he stomped, crooned, did a gospel-tinged revival spiel, and joyously extolled the powers of love, faith, and sweat. Commitment never looked so good. --SD

Jeremy Northam

Cheeky Rupert Everett was supposed to steal the show. At the very least, the lustrous Cate Blanchett was meant to steal their scenes. But in the end, it was Northam — all liquid eyes, slow-burn charisma, and touching fallibility — who stole our hearts as Robert Chilton, Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband. The Brit donned a waistcoat yet again for David Mamet's The Winslow Boy(inset), this time sexing up a pompous lawyer. Who knew rectitude could be such a turn-on? --TJ

Glen KEANE

The celebrity voice actors in cartoon features usually get the marquee billing. But it's the lead animators who really generate the star power—and never more so than with Keane's work on Disney's Tarzan. Skipping his Mouse House gig to study anatomy and sculpture in Paris a few years back, Keane brought a pulsing anatomical knowledge to the lord of the apes, posing his lean abs against 3-D trees with unmatched dynamism. If Michelangelo were still here, he'd be studying Keane. --SD

Reese Witherspoon & Matthew Broderick

As an insufferable go-getter hell-bent on becoming student body president, and as a teacher who teaches about ethics but unethically can't stand to see her win, Witherspoon and Broderick had the time of their careers playing people who don't play fair in Election. What made their salty performances especially sweet is that the two actors — with their his-and-her auras of eternal pleasantness — are so on the money about the treacherous side of dear old school days. Give this duo an unlimited hall pass excusing them from ever acting nice again. --LS