Yeah… I already said Tom Hanks, but that’s ok.
I was going to mention him, but he wasn’t a leading actor in any of these as per the OP requirements.
Yeah, but we got all the way to post #7 before somebody posted whatever the hell they liked and ignored the specifics in the OP. Isn’t that some kind of record?
If shorts don’t count (and I don’t think they fit what the OP meant by a movie), then I’d knock off Monsieur Verdoux and start with The Kid.
I hoped I’d get to mention him. Dagnabbit. And Myrna Loy comes close, since she’s in 3 of those 5. And her other two movies (Wife versus Secretary, Petticoat Fever) for 1936 I haven’t seen, but get decent IMDB ratings.
Another good run for De Niro 1985-88:
Brazil
The Mission
Angel Heart
The Untouchables
Midnight Run
I’d say you had a “run” of just one really good movie in there (True Grit).
The Green Berets was loathed by critics (Ebert gave it zero stars), as was Hellfighters. I doubt most of the others would appear on anyone’s 100 Best Movies List (or even 500 Best).
Some old school:
I think of Douglas Fairbanks.
1920 The Mark of Zorro
1921 The Nut
1921 The Three Musketeers
1922 Robin Hood
1924 The Thief of Bagdad
True Grit was damn good, the others truly sucked.
My nomination is Henry Fonda
12 Angry Men
Juror #8
1956 The Wrong Man
Manny Balestrero
1956 War and Peace
Pierre Bezukhov
1955 Mister Roberts
Lt. JG Douglas A. ‘Doug’ Roberts
1948 Fort Apache
Lt. Col. Owen Thursday
Meryl Streep for actress, although still of the night is a bit weak.
Silkwood
Karen Silkwood
1982 Sophie’s Choice
Sophie
1982 Still of the Night
Brooke Reynolds
1981 The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Sarah / Anna
1979 Kramer vs. Kramer
Joanna Kramer
Let’s give Brando some credit too
On the Waterfront
Terry Malloy
1953 The Wild One
Johnny Strabler / Narrator
1953 Julius Caesar
Mark Antony
1952 Viva Zapata!
Emiliano Zapata
1951 A Streetcar Named Desire
Stanley
I wonder if Sir Ian McKellen qualifies:
X-Men (2000)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
X-Men 2 (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Emile (2003) appears in IMDB before The Return of the King, that was not a very successful movie, but while Emile was made in 2003 it was not released wide until 2004.
Redford followed The Candidate with Jeremiah Johnson, and The Way We Were, and The Sting, and The Great Gatsby – followed by a movie I obviously adore, followed by Three Days Of The Condor, and All The President’s Men, and A Bridge Too Far, and The Electric Horseman, and Brubaker, and The Natural, and Out Of Africa.
Dustin Hoffman had a pretty solid nine-movie run from 1973 to 1985, but then he unfortunately followed it up with Ishtar. (Ratings from Rottentomatoes.com)
100% Death of a Salesman Willy Loman
– 1985
88% Tootsie Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels
– 1982
82% Agatha Wally Stanton
– 1979
88% Kramer vs. Kramer Ted Kramer
– 1979
100% Straight Time Max Dembo
– 1978
80% Marathon Man Babe Levy
– 1976
98% All the President’s Men Carl Bernstein
– 1976
100% Lenny Lenny Bruce
– 1974
92% Papillon Dega
– 1973
Brad Pitt had a nice run:
Interview with a Vampire
Legends of the Fall
Se7en
12 Monkeys
Sleepers
He followed that up a few years later with another nice run:
Fight Club
Snatch
The Mexican
Spy Game
Oceans 11
No, no!
That was brains.
I’d say that Leo DiCaprio has had a pretty solid 13-film run since 2002:
*The Wolf of Wall Street
The Great Gatsby
Django Unchained
J. Edgar
Inception
Shutter Island
Revolutionary Road
Body of Lies
Blood Diamond
The Departed
The Aviator
Catch Me If You Can
Gangs of New York
*
Yes, *J. Edgar, Body of Lies *and Blood Diamond weren’t huge successes, and the Great Gatsby wasn’t a critical hit, but they were all high-quality movies directed by first-rate directors. I think that purely in terms of picking the right parts, Leo is the best at what he does in Hollywood.
James Dean only had three but they were solid and classics; Giant maybe less so than the first two.
But Steve McQueen’s heyday was top dollar.
Hanks is barely in That Thing You Do and isn’t the lead or even the co-lead. He’s the main guy on the poster and DVD cover and directed it and all that but if you look on IMDB, he’s billed like 6th.
True, but Lord of the Rings always feels like one movie to me, even though it has 3 different editors and somewhat different feels.
He got into two great projects simultaneously, though, not an easy thing to do.
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Despite what you might think of it artistically, ToD did make $180M and was the third highest grossing film of 1984. It only got beat by Beverly Hills Cop and Ghostbusters. The $180M was only $20M behind the much superior Last Crusade. Still a good run for Ford.
That’s good stuff. Fonda also had a nice run in the early 1960s:
The Longest Day
How the West was Won
Spencer’s Mountain
The Best Man
Fail-safe