good acting might be doing a part well. e.g. Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, Bryan Cranston as LBJ.
a good actor is one that can do many roles well; e.g. Bryan Cranston.
James Cagney said “You walk in, plant yourself squarely on both feet, look the other fella in the eye, and tell the truth.”
Groucho Marx was a great actor. Could he play anyone other than Groucho Marx? No. Did he maker any movie he was in at least twice as funny than it would have been without him? yes - hence, greatness.
Range is easy. Comedy is hard.
Then I would call him a great comedian, rather than a great actor.
Let’s not forget the difference a venue makes. I saw Richard Burton act on stage and it was magical. I’ve seen him act on film and he comes across as hammy as William Shatner. Had I only seen him in one of these two venues, I’d have never thought the other was possible.
You know who was one of the top-of-the-tree greats? Toshiro Mifune.
Those of us in the West had only an incomplete, subtitle-dependent understanding of his dialogue. We had to guess at the cultural subtleties of the stories he was telling. Yet, so powerful was his art that he moved us every single time.
Like Gracie Allen, he probably thought of himself as a comic actor, rather than a comedian.
Try The Quiet Man which I haven’t seen, but everything I read about it says it is far from his usual Western or war movie.
An actor playing the same kind of role all the time does not necessarily mean he can’t play anything else. Wayne could open a movie, Wayne drew audiences which didn’t care that much about the plot. What you see on the screen might be totally different from what you’d get meeting the actor in real life. There is an amazing transformation when the cameras start to roll. I’ve seen it.
Good actors can do at least one type of role really well. Great actors can do several. And it helps if the actor is not tied too closely to a role. In watching Adaptation I didn’t see Meryl Streep at all. And quick, describe Johnny Depp in five words or less. You can do it with John Wayne, I can’t even begin to do it for him.
Which is reasonable, since I recall from various bios I’ve read that he and his brothers did skits. He didn’t do anything resembling standup in the beginning. Some of the skits made it into the movies. like the classroom scene in Horsefeathers.
he indeed was a giant actor.
Their best movies were written on the road, in theaters. They would try a scene before a live audience and re-write it for the next show until it just couldn’t get any better. Then they’d make the film. They did this for The Coconuts and Animal Crackers