Someone whose language you don’t understand…
-Matti Pellonpää
-Marcello Mastroianni
-Patrick Dewaere
-Toshiro Mifune
Alain Delon
Louis Jordan
Michelle Yeoh
Do-yeon Jeon
The best actress in the past 20 years. Not the best foreign actress, but the best actress, period.
Chow Yun-fat
Catherine Deneuve
Isabelle Huppert
Juliette Binoche
I’m confused because these are two very different categories. “Foreign actors” for me would mean any Non-German. But “someone whose language I don’t understand” exclude Austrian and Swiss actors who I DO understand as well as every English speaking actor. And what about French actors? I speak and understand basic French, but not fluently enough to be able to follow a film in original French. So what should I post?
A most excellent username to point out OP’s privileged frame of reference.
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Claudia Cardinale
Louis Jouvet
Jet Li
Tatsuya Nakadai
Erich von Stroheim
Max von Sydow
Conrad Veidt
Liv Ullmann
Gerard Depardieu
Toshiro Mifune
Philippe Noiret
Jean Gabin
Jean Marais
Jene Reno, when he is speaking French.
Obviously I meant foreign language, but you decide - I can’t determine how well your language skills are. If you understand it 100%, I’d leave it out.
How could I forget one of my favorites - Jean Gabin (thanks to the reminder above)
Ok, then for me that would be non-German and non-English speaking actors (though it pains me not to include Christoph Waltz and Bruno Ganz):
Catherine Deneuve (watching “La Belle du jour” kills me every time)
Jean Pierre Leaud
Takashi Shimura
Anna Magnani
Anna Magnani was great… A force to be reckon with. She was always wise, and had a funny way of exposing bullshit with a flippant, cynical, or comedic line, along with her sarcastic smile.
And she could pull it off without being “movie beautiful” or even “Hollywood beautiful”. I mean, she WAS beautiful, but was never afraid to play it straight and realistically, warts and all.
Right. She was great at being vulnerable, especially when her character is trying to remain tough… Personally, she’s my kind of beautiful. Then again, I see prettier women at my grocery store than on TV.
A lot of the people mentioned speak perfectly decent English - just not as their first language.
There’s at least one exception. When Anna Magnani was offered her first role in a Hollywood movie, she quipped that she “wasn’t even able to say ‘please’ in English”. She learned the part of her first English film phonetically, though I’m quite sure that she easily learned English later during her Hollywood stint, as she had also spoken French fluently before.
An outstanding actress, in the Top 5 worldwide, but I counter with Moon So Ri. If you haven’t seen Oasis, it’s a must see. The Blu-Ray has an amazing making video where you see her rehearsing her transformation!
Others on my list that haven’t been mentioned with the movies, that made me a fan for life and whom I’ll watch just sitting and eating sushi or kimbap!
Joey Wong Jyo Yin/Wang Tsu Hsien - A Chinese Ghost Story Coming up on 30 years of being in love/infatuated with her!
**Matsu Takako **- Confessions, Villon’s Wife
Kaho - Hitori Shizuka (series)
**Lee Se Young **- When I Was Nine, Lovely Rivals - She’s the Asian Miranda Cosgrove. A great preteen actress who still looks the same in her 20’s and was always a great actress.
*Jeon Ji Hyun - My Sassy Girl * Of course!
Lee Na Young - Maundy Thursday, Actresses
Kim Min Hee - Alone at Night on the Beach Alone - The second half of Actresses, a pseudo-doumentary has Kim and other great Korean actresses sitting around a dinner table and discussing their careers and the Korean movie industry. See I told you I’d watch them sitting and kimbap!
There’s lots more, but that’s my Top 9, #10 is open and various by what I’ve seen lately.
Edit: Removed Bae Doo Na because she speaks English in Cloud Atlas
Also, Jeon Ji Hyun spoke English in the awful Blood: The Last Vampire, the only film of hers I can’t bear to watch. And Kim Min Hee speaks English in On the Beach at Night Alone, not *Alone at Night on the Beach Alone * slaps head and I believe in some of her other movies by Hong Sang Soo that I haven’t gotten around to watching yet.