Essential Male Leads
C. Robert Cargill September 9, 2009
You know, when my editor, Laremy “The Big Hitter” Legel, first posited the question to me: “Name five male leads you can’t do without,” I wondered aloud, “What does that even mean?” There are a number of ways to look at that: my five favorites, my all-time favorites, five guys whose deaths would make me stop watching movies, what? So I spent the weekend pondering that, compiling a list of the fifty or so best actors based upon different criteria. Then it hit me. It’s not about who are my absolute favorites or the highest grossing or even the absolute best. It is about who does more for film than any other actor.
That set me to thinking about the current crop of A-listers who are known as perfectionists when it comes to picking problems; guys best known for working with the best directors in the world and only choosing profound, powerful, or highly entertaining projects that push the barriers of what is considered mainstream. These are the guys who don’t just make blockbusters. These are the guys that turn down blockbusters to make important or cool indie films and turn films that ordinarily would be completely ignored by the mainstream into hits. Not necessarily BIG hits, but money makers that make noise. And even when these guys fail, they are always part of interesting failures.
Interestingly enough, while these five may look like no brainers to some of you, only one of them cracks into the top 20 earners by gross (at number 17), and only one other even cracks into the top 50. These aren’t the guys who make 300 million dollar blockbusters — they’re the guys who make good movies. They raise the bar of American filmmaking. And they are five we cannot do without.
The Cary Grant of his day, this guy presents a suave intelligence, an unshakable cool, and, most importantly, he brings class in an era when the e-tabloids offer up the debaucherous and classless on a daily basis. When the Screen Actors Guild slapped him on the wrist with a fine for breaking strike lines while banning five no-name actors, he pleaded for their return and offered to pay their fines out of his own pocket. It takes a special kind of cat to pull a stunt like that. And when you factor in that he’s made so many cutting-edge, hard-to-market films as well as produced many others, the only way he could be any cooler is if he was one of the best actors in the business. Oh yeah. He is. If Hollywood had a king, it would be under the rule of King Clooney.
One of the greatest things that can be said about Brad Pitt is that he has been known to repeatedly frustrate his agent by choosing smaller, better films over high-grossing blockbuster-types. You’ll never see Brad Pitt jumping out of a helicopter, firing wildly at terrorists while trying to save the girl … unless it is in a comedy. Instead you find him making movies like Inglorious Basterds, elevating the box office cume of someone worthy like Tarantino — when he’s not working with the likes of Stephen Soderberg, Tony Scott, David Fincher, Terrence Malick, and the Coen brothers.
There’s something to be said about an actor who only makes one movie a year or so. Especially when he makes those movies with Stephen Spielberg, Sam Mendes, and Ridley Scott and has become Martin Scorceses go-to guy (and replacement for Robert DeNiro). Quite possibly the most talented of the set, he’s best known for making Oscar-bait rather than popcorn films, leaving him possibly the least popular of the five.
The very model of the ballsy actor thumbing his nose at Hollywood, many critics predicted his fading into obscurity early in his career when he left a popular television show to make weird, independent films. After a slight resurgence with a series of paycheck films in the late ’90s (after the birth of his children), he seemed to swear off films of that sort and devote himself entirely to big-budget gambles and small-time, weird indies. The result is him becoming one of the most sought after names in the business (and number 17 on the top earners chart), not to mention the one who makes my wife’s eyes light up every time she hears about a new movie of his.
The new badboy. If you don’t think he belongs on this list then you haven’t spoken to anyone under the age of 25 lately. As Batman, he has won the hearts of tens of millions as the dark brooding hero du jour. But a careful look at his track record shows a love for brilliantly conceived genre films, tempered by the occasional dark indie. If sci-fi/fantasy/horror has an Oscar-caliber hero, it is this guy; and his star is continually on the rise. The opposite of Clooney, this guy is an occasionally angry wildcard known for telling people what for — but is also classy enough to come out and admit his own punkish nature (as he did after the Terminator screaming incident). Hard to work with or not, he’s got a nose for risky and cool projects and always delivers the goods.
Tags: brad pitt, christian bale, george clooney, johnny depp, leonardo dicaprio
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