JAVIER BARDEM
Past Gem: Live Flesh (1997)

Bardem spends most of Pedro Almodóvar's erotic drama in a wheelchair; he's David, a former cop, rendered paraplegic by a gunshot, who becomes a Murderball-ish star of a wheelchair basketball league. Even without the use of his legs, Bardem brims over (as he does in No Country for Old Men) with a simmering, seething, palpable sense of physical menace.