ALEC BALDWIN, Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

''PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN!'' As Blake, the drill-sergeant salesman whose watch costs more than your car, Alec Baldwin roars through a seven-minute David Mamet monologue so ferocious, well-written, and cool that you can easily imagine frat boys and film geeks alike boisterously quoting it to all their friends. (In fact, when GQ profiled Baldwin last year, they filled a whole sidebar just by merely reprinting the best, nastiest parts of Blake's brilliant harangue.) There's a reason Baldwin's one unforgettable scene is more YouTube-able than most of the other performances on this list: his work in Glengarry is the definition of a small role with big impact. —Gregory Kirschling