[QUOTE=Rilchiam]
Was recently watching Reservoir Dogs. Mr. Pink flees the robbery, takes cover behind a car, and the camera dollies in as he fires over the hood, his entire face clenched. “That’s the shot that made Buscemi a star.”
[QUOTE]
…considering Reservoir Dogs was certainly less than a hit film and Buscemi was still pretty obscure for years afterward, I think linking anything from that film to a breakthroug is flawed. Despite working with the Coens and Tarantino and costarring in a Sandler film nobody would have called him a star. I think his real breakthru shot is from Fargo. Bleeding from the neck, that red plaid coat, satark white snow landscape behind him… that’s more of a testament to the director than to Buscemi.
But up until then, he was just a TV star - that shot made him a *movie * star.
It’s the same with Bruce Willis. Sure, he was famous from Moonlighting, but the moment he smirked into that walkie talkie and quoted Will Rogers (more of a paraphrase, actually), he ascended to a new level of stardom.
IIRC, he was meditating with a very calm look on his face. It was his buddy, Ray Jackson, who quipped, “That hurts me just from looking at it.” Then a few minutes later he added, “You know you ought to stop doing that. You might want to have kids one of these days.”
Anthony Hopkins, perfectly still, dressed all in white, brightly lit in the midst of a lightless cesspool, pudgy and balding and deadly.
The character became a parody of itself in later films and novels, and was completely rendered toothless by the last few books/movies’ insistence on “developing his character,” so it’s easy to forget how powerful a first impression that character made before a line was even spoken.
Salma Hayek crossing the street and causing a car accident in Desperado.
Mel Gibson walking towards the Nightrider’s accident in Mad Max.
Clint Eastwood’s a tough one. Do you pick him standing in his poncho with his cigar in A Fistfull of Dollars or one of its sequels, or staring into space as Misty sits in his lap all night from Play Misty For Me? Or something from Rawhide? Coogan’s Bluff? Hang 'Em High? All those predate Dirty Harry, but I still think you gotta go with “Did he fire six shots, or only five?”