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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by 77devil View Post
    Contemporaries would include Damon, Wahlberg, Affleck, DiCaprio, and Toby Maguire. Maybe the competition wasn't that tough.
    Quote Originally Posted by NashvilleDevil View Post
    What about Sean Penn, Clooney, Rockwell, Downey, Depp? All those guys were born between 60-69.
    Quote Originally Posted by 77devil View Post
    And Tom Cruise.
    Quote Originally Posted by throatybeard View Post
    By the way, PSH is great, but my Gen X actor list starts with Cate Blanchett.
    Okay, I have a little time now. If we give Camelot to the Baby Boomers, then we're going with 1964-1980, and eliminating Penn, Clooney, Depp, and Cruise. This leaves the following suggestions so far:

    Robert Downey Jr. (b. 1965)
    Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)
    Sam Rockwell (b. 1968)
    Cate Blanchett (b. 1969)
    Matt Damon (b. 1970)
    Mark Wahlberg (b. 1971)
    Ben Affleck (b. 1972)
    Leonardo DiCaprio (b. 1974)
    Tobey Maguire (b. 1975)

    I would consider adding any of the following:

    Juliette Binoche (b. 1964)
    Don Cheadle (b. 1964)
    Russell Crowe (b. 1964)
    John Cusack (b. 1966)
    Benicio del Toro (b. 1967)
    Hugh Jackman (b. 1968)
    Will Smith (b. 1968)
    Javier Bardem (b. 1969)
    Edward Norton (b. 1969)
    Rachel Weisz (b. 1970)
    Jude Law (b. 1972)
    Amy Adams (b. 1974)
    Christian Bale (b. 1974)
    Joaquin Phoenix (b. 1974)
    Hilary Swank (b. 1974)
    Angelina Jolie (b. 1975)
    Kate Winslet (b. 1975)
    Chiwetel Ejiofor (b. 1977)
    Heath Ledger (1979-2008)
    Ryan Gosling (b. 1980)

    Oscar winners for acting -- an inexact but popular measure -- also in that generation:

    Sandra Bullock (b. 1964)
    Nicolas Cage (b. 1964)
    Marisa Tomei (b. 1964)
    Marlee Matlin (b. 1965)
    Halle Berry (b. 1966)
    Jamie Foxx (b. 1967)
    Nicole Kidman (b. 1967)
    Mo'Nique (b. 1967)
    Julia Roberts (b. 1967)
    Mira Sorvino (b. 1967)
    Cuba Gooding Jr. (b. 1968)
    Renée Zellweger (b. 1969)
    Catherine Zeta-Jones (b. 1969)
    Jennifer Connelly (b. 1970)
    Octavia Spencer (b. 1970)
    Jean Dujardin (b. 1972)
    Gwyneth Paltrow (b. 1972)
    Adrien Brody (b. 1973)
    Penélope Cruz (b. 1974)
    Marion Cotillard (b. 1975)
    Charlize Theron (b. 1975)
    Reese Witherspoon (b. 1976)

  2. #22

    Throaty, maybe you should move this subdiscussion?

    If we're going with full birth cycle generations of approx. 20 years, I'd go with the Strauss/Howe years throaty mentioned, and allow some movement for those at the bookending years to the next or prior generation, so '61-'82 with exceptions granted. That works for me, because there is no way Johnny Depp is not an X'er in spirit, and he would have graduated high school in the '80's. Clooney's arguable either direction, and Penn, though born in '60, exudes more of the X'er ethos to me than Boomer. And if he's included in the Gen X category he goes right into most people's top 5.

    Others for submission:

    Michael Fassbender
    Benedict Cumberbatch
    Tom Hardy
    Matthew McConaughey (some will laugh, but then they'll see Dallas Buyer's Club and True Detective, and we'll all realize it's too early to even have this conversation in some senses).

    On the other hand, we could categorize "actor generations" as something different entirely, as alluded upthread. I'd argue that within 5 years either direction, give or take (so 10 year total) around the actor or actress to whom the phase "of their generation" is being attached, works fine, with some flexibility based on when an actor/actress hit their stride and became well-known. Because a lifespan in the world of entertainment is so much shorter than in life, so movements come and go much more quickly. By that standard, Sean Penn is clearly in the Tom Hanks generation, then, along with Denzel and others, but George Clooney is not. In any event, this is a smaller group than the traditional social studies idea of a generation. That yardstick takes people like Gosling and Ledger out of the discussion, as well as the additional people I've mentioned above, since they didn't even hit their strides until after someone like Hoffman, who had early success, had already won an Oscar. When we say that Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the finest actors of his generation, then, I think what we're referring to is "amongst people who started garnering acclaim and a lot of notice in the mid- late-'90's and then sustained excellence for some time thereafter." That's a significantly smaller group than just Gen X'ers generally.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    I'm not really arguing the point, but who else would be in the discussion (also what is "his generation")?
    Quote Originally Posted by 77devil View Post
    Gen. Xrs. or the group after Nicholson/Pacino/De Niro/Dustin Hoffman. Contemporaries would include Damon, Wahlberg, Affleck, DiCaprio, and Toby Maguire. Maybe the competition wasn't that tough.
    Quote Originally Posted by NashvilleDevil View Post
    What about Sean Penn, Clooney, Rockwell, Downey, Depp? All those guys were born between 60-69.
    Quote Originally Posted by 77devil View Post
    And Tom Cruise.
    I can think of a number of others that, at least to me, are in the discussion of the great actors of Hoffman's generation: Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey, Edward Norton, Joaquin Phoenix, James Spader, Jamie Foxx, Lawrence Fishburne, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Matt Dillon, Paul Giamatti. Who else?

    Oh, and 77devil: Toby Maguire??? Really?

  4. #24
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    Irrespective of which generation we assign him to (and incidentally, throaty et al, that's but one interesting dimension of this debate), Daniel Day Lewis' name is more than worthy of inclusion in this thread.

  5. #25
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    I second (for a second time) the idea of a separate thread on non-PSH stuff. Just saying.

    If someone was adventurous enough to set up a Bracket-style vote-off, that would be even cooler. But I am technogoofy and it is beyond my meager abilities.

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by wilson View Post
    Irrespective of which generation we assign him to (and incidentally, throaty et al, that's but one interesting dimension of this debate), Daniel Day Lewis' name is more than worthy of inclusion in this thread.
    DDL was born in 1957 and got famous in the 1980s. I'd say he's pretty clearly Boom, not X. He had already won Best Actor for My Left Foot in 1989.

    Back to Hoffman, I was somewhat disturbed by the article on CNN's website chronicling his last 24 hours as best as they could reconstruct them. I mean, not disturbed enough not to read it, but still.

    Matthew Gravelvoice keeps coming up. We need a True Detective thread. I've enjoyed the first three eps a lot. The fourth one was delayed a week, sensibly, to stay away from a football game of some note two days ago.

    A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
    ---Roger Ebert


    Some questions cannot be answered
    Who’s gonna bury who
    We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
    ---Over the Rhine

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by throatybeard View Post
    DDL was born in 1957 and got famous in the 1980s. I'd say he's pretty clearly Boom, not X. He had already won Best Actor for My Left Foot in 1989.
    Agreed; I just felt that while we were throwing out a list of our best actors, he at least deserved for his name to be out there.
    And to use an example from up-thread, he's only like 3 years older than Stanley Tucci, who is supposedly a member of some other generation.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    I second (for a second time) the idea of a separate thread on non-PSH stuff. Just saying.
    The pure-PSH thread would give us occasional news updates, like the 50-70 bags of heroin or whatever, and then fade away. A tangent was inevitable, and frankly, this Generation X discussion is the one you want. I could have steered this into dark conspiracy territory, mentioning how the leaders of Scientology might be angry about The Master. Everyone loves Amy Adams, and no one would ever believe Joaquin Phoenix would die of a drug overdose, so...

    I'm interested in the Gen X poll but am not interested in taking ownership of it. (Honestly, I thought Jason Evans would commandeer the thread by now.) I knew Daniel Day-Lewis would get mentioned out of a very human resistance to compartmentalization. He's clearly a Baby Boomer, and that discussion would be a nightmare. I mean, Kevin Spacey has two of Oscar's most deserved awards and he'd be a huge longshot to crack a shortlist of 15.

    Anyway, I noticed that I neglected people who dabble in TV: Kyle Chandler (b. 1965), Michael Imperioli (b. 1966), Michael Sheen (b. 1969), Damian Lewis (b. 1971), and Idris Elba (b. 1972) come to mind. Edie Falco (b. 1963) is Camelot-era.

  9. #29
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    As with any organic conversation, tangents happen. I would probably severe some new content if it got into a discussion of Duke's rotation for next season but, at the moment, I don't think PSH is so sacred that a discussion of the great actors of his generation is a slap in the face of his memorial thread. Plus, as Brevity noted, a PSH-only discussion is likely to spend a lot of time dwelling on the depths of his addiction. I prefer to remember him for his onscreen work rather than his off-screen excess.

    As for a best actor poll, as you guys have ably noted, the problem is one of who we are comparing to who. One can apply the 5 year rule but each time we add an actor who is on the edge of the 5 years, we can somewhat argue that we should extend the 5 years a little bit further out. And, as much as I love what PSH did in his career, once the discussion gets into actors a little older than him like Day-Lewis, Hanks, Denzel, and perhaps even Penn... well, the conversation about PSH's all-time greatness gets pretty tough if we start including them.

    I am always up for a good poll or two. I think, rather than head-to-head, perhaps a series of large group polls could winnow the field a bit before we got to some head-to-head matchups. That is what we did a few years ago when we had a series of elimination polls before a final poll that found that Hoosiers... no... wait... Field of Dreams was the greatest sports movie of all time. We could try something similar...

    ...but where would we draw the line. Would we look for greatest still-working actor and include folks like Pacino, DeNiro, Hoffman, Dreyfus, Hackman, and Nicholson? Do we pick an arbitrary cut off year of birth? Is this a male only contest because if we include women it is sorta hard to imagine the greatest female actress of all time, Meryl Streep, not winning. We could go for "all-time" and include Olivier, Tracy, Brando, O'Toole and so on... but I find those to be so difficult because many of us have not recently seen and appreciated some of the fine older work.

    I am open to suggestions. I would lean toward "Greatest Actor born after 1960" which would mean we'd be talking about guys who are currently 54 and under. It would take Denzel, Tom Hanks, and DD-Lewis out of the poll, which would make it more competitive. To me, those three really stand above just about everyone else really active in the movie biz today.

    -Jason "but, like I said, I am open to suggestions" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Is this a male only contest because if we include women it is sorta hard to imagine the greatest female actress of all time, Meryl Streep, not winning.
    -Jason "but, like I said, I am open to suggestions" Evans
    Katherine Hepburn would probably disagree with this.

  11. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    ... no one would ever believe Joaquin Phoenix would die of a drug overdose, ... .
    Unlike his brother River?

  12. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    ... As for a best actor poll, ... where would we draw the line. ... -Jason "but, like I said, I am open to suggestions" Evans
    Wouldn't the only question be whether to normalize box office receipts to account for $ value over the years?

    Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Cruise would have to be the top actors of all time, with maybe Will Smith (but he actually acted in a few).

    I would only count starring roles and no animated films. If you include Johnny Depp with POTC or if RDIII gets credit for the Avengers, a real actor could actually be the "best" actor.

  13. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    Wouldn't the only question be whether to normalize box office receipts to account for $ value over the years?

    Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Cruise would have to be the top actors of all time, with maybe Will Smith (but he actually acted in a few).

    I would only count starring roles and no animated films. If you include Johnny Depp with POTC or if RDIII gets credit for the Avengers, a real actor could actually be the "best" actor.
    We do a poll based on numbers then we will all be subject to a stinging rebuke by throaty.

    I think PSH was a tremendous actor and you always liked it when he showed up in a movie but I think those that are writing he was the greatest character actor of his generation have it right.

  14. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by brevity View Post
    ... no one would ever believe Joaquin Phoenix would die of a drug overdose, ... ..
    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    Unlike his brother River?
    Nice try, but that was my point. Joaquin, then 19, was at the Viper Room that night. His brother died in his lap. I don't know Joaquin's own proclivities, but I doubt he or his family would allow history to repeat. (This book, while not the complete story some may want, is a pretty good read.)

    I left River Phoenix (1970-1993) off the list because his praised career was mostly one of unfulfilled promise. He was considered exceptional for a child actor or young adult actor, and that provision was never removed. Almost everyone else in this thread has had time to grow in their craft, and more evidence to show.

    Oh, and in my TV addendum I left off James Gandolfini (1961-2013), a Camelot-era birth who I thought was older.

  15. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by NashvilleDevil View Post
    Katherine Hepburn would probably disagree with this.
    In my view the best actor of all time, male or female, is Bette Davis.

  16. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by NashvilleDevil View Post
    Katherine Hepburn would probably disagree with this.
    Or Anna Magnani. Or Garbo.

    A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
    ---Roger Ebert


    Some questions cannot be answered
    Who’s gonna bury who
    We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
    ---Over the Rhine

  17. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by throatybeard View Post
    Or Anna Magnani. Or Garbo.
    Oh! And Ingrid Bergman.

    You know who's not going to win any greatest ever polls, but I find really amazing, and she doesn't get talked about a lot in America, is Maribel Verdú. And she's Gen X!*


    * - (Although Strauss/Howe really construct that as an Anglo-American thing).

    A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
    ---Roger Ebert


    Some questions cannot be answered
    Who’s gonna bury who
    We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
    ---Over the Rhine

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    I second (for a second time) the idea of a separate thread on non-PSH stuff ...
    I cannot find the quote online, but recall a Miss Manners (Judith Martin) quip about gatherings after a funeral being about gathering to remember the departed/comfort the grieving ... and drink the dearly departed's liquor. The turn of this particular conversation strikes me as 'par' for how conversations may run, even among those closer to the deceased, at such gatherings. I feel for the man's children ...

  19. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by throatybeard View Post
    Oh! And Ingrid Bergman.

    You know who's not going to win any greatest ever polls, but I find really amazing, and she doesn't get talked about a lot in America, is Maribel Verdú. And she's Gen X!*


    * - (Although Strauss/Howe really construct that as an Anglo-American thing).
    Thank for say Ingrid! Meant to mention her since she's my favorite actress.

  20. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by NashvilleDevil View Post
    Katherine Hepburn would probably disagree with this.
    I really think it is Streep or Hepburn. Bergman and especially Bette Davis are in the conversation, but come up a tad short.

    Throaty would hate me for making it about numbers, but the Oscars are a decent measuring stick. Streep has 15 Best Actress nominations with 2 wins. Hepburn has 12 with 4 wins. Bergman (6 and 2) and Bette (10 an 2) come up short of the top two by a significant margin.

    Strep also has 3 nominations for Best Supporting Actress with one win. Hepburn has zero (though Cate Blanchett won BSA for playing Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator... does that count at all in Hepburn's column?). Bette Davis was also never nominated for BSA. Bergman was nominated and won once.

    So, my argument for Meryl Streep is that her 18 nominations and 3 wins trump Hepburn's 12 nominations and 4 wins. It is of course worth noting that Meryl Streep is very likely to continue to accumulate nominations and perhaps wins over the next decade or two as she continues to work. I doubt Katherine Hepburn will be picking up any more awards posthumously at this point.

    -Jason "like I said to start this conversation, I think Meryl Streep's amazing acting career trumps anything done by any male actor" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

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