Special Coverage Pop Culture Classics (The EW 1000)Sound BitesSummer TVBox Office Game
Page 2 of 19

02 anthony perkins PSYCHO

(1960, Universal) ''We all go a little mad sometimes.'' ''She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.'' No one can speak lines like these today without reflexively resorting to ''the psycho stutter'' or ''the psycho stare.'' Such unnaturalness is only natural -- after a half century of serial-killer movies, we share a template for knife-wielding loonies. Perkins, the pioneer, had no such road map. For him, the tics were organic: He approached Norman Bates as a character, not a trope. His murderous, mother-lovin' motelier is plenty creepy, yes, but it's Perkins' disarming, oddball lack of self-consciousness that makes you believe Janet Leigh wouldn't take off down the highway after one look into those beady, birdlike eyes. No matter what he's doing -- sucking on a piece of candy or methodically cleaning up a blood-spattered bathroom -- you never doubt for an instant that the man is completely, utterly, and terrifyingly at home.

03 cary_grant THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

(1940, Warner) In Pauline Kael's formulation, Grant was the Man From Dream City. The ''city'' bit is clear: His acrobatic urbanity -- the dance of dapper sidesteps, teasing nods, streetwise shrugs -- is matchless. The content of the ''dream'' is complex, as his elastic suavity accommodates all manner of ambiguities. When, for instance, Grant dashes off his dashing lines, his verbal aggression can seem driven by neurosis and his voice by the crack of a silken whip. The Philadelphia Story is about a romance between Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, and about Grant -- as the odd man out -- being uncommonly needy. His C.K. Dexter Haven is more desperate than his man on the run in North by Northwest. Rather cruel, rather too cool, he wears his sophistication as if it were armor. It is rare to find Cary Grant heartbroken, and more rare yet to find an actor who can seem terribly lonely and still find romance a jolly game.

04 ingrid_bergman CASABLANCA

(1942, Warner) When Bergman walks into Rick's Cafe, her Ilsa is ''the most beautiful woman ever to visit Casablanca.'' She pulls us in with a simmering-below-the-surface eroticism and an un-Hollywood freshness that makes her seem earthbound and attainable. And like all great screen actors, she made the camera an accomplice. Watch her face, held in a tight, caressing close-up, as Dooley Wilson's Sam first sings ''As Time Goes By.'' A lesser actress might have overemoted, but Bergman restricts expression to a minimum and just lets the camera play across that gorgeous profile. It's one of those wonderfully mysterious moments when an actor, seemingly by doing nothing, lets us imagine everything. And remember this: As a costar she brought out a pained romanticism in Humphrey Bogart that he'd never shown before nor would again. Likewise, Bergman would never again be quite this luminous.

05 samuel_l_jackson JUNGLE FEVER

(1991, Universal) Spike Lee's inner-city melodrama is ostensibly about an affair between African-American architect Flipper (Wesley Snipes) and Italian-American secretary Angela (Annabella Sciorra), but Samuel L. Jackson steals the movie as Flipper's crackhead brother, Gator. In just five scenes, Jackson (who had completed real-life drug rehab mere months before filming) beams a lifetime of hurt and rage through his eyes. Wheedling money from his doormat of a mother (Ruby Dee) and tragically menacing his fallen-pastor father (Ossie Davis) with a devilish dance, Jackson fearlessly conjures his character's inner demons. The Cannes film festival created a special best-supporting-actor prize for his work, but the Academy snubbed him. Yet in the end, Jackson's harrowing turn as Gator lifted him out of the swamp of bit-part actors and helped make him a king of the Hollywood jungle.


Page 2 of 19