And also his wonderful turns as Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams and David Frost.
Bloody hell, he’s a one-man dinner party guest list.
Leigh Dilley was a convincing Winston Churchill.
In the (or not) category, John Wayne as Genghis Khan is up there with Edgar G. Robinson.
I’ve only seen The Conqueror once, and I still can’t believe I was that masochistic.
James Purefoy as Mark Anthony in “Rome”.
Christopher Plummer as Wellington in “Waterloo”.
In the not to, it is hard to top Depardieu as Christopher Colombus (funnily Depardieu will be forever in my mind when I think of Danton).
Gary Busey in The Buddy Holly Story. Hands down one of the best biopic performances ever put on celluloid. He was spot on. Brilliant. He did all his own playing and singing, but even more impressive was that the musical performances were all done live, which is very unusal for these kinds of movies. Usually the performances are taped (even if the actors are doing their own vocals or playing their own instruments), and then mimed and lip-synched on screen. In The Buddy Holly Story, when the Crickets were playing, they were really playing. Some of the narrative aspects of that film are a little routine, but in terms of musical performances and replicating the real star, it’s as good as any rock and roll biopic ever made.
Noah Wily as Steve Jobs. Anthony Michael Hall, as Bill Gates, not so much.
Supposedly very. He began researching the role in the 1950s when Twain was roughly about the same distance in time as JFK’s assassination. He interviewed many people who had seen Twain give lectures and a few who had known him well including, most notably his former secretary Isabel Lyon (with whom Twain parted on terrible terms) as well as Twain’s daughter Clara.
He said there are two things about his characterization that are not accurate, but they are intentional: Twain did not smoke cigars while he lectured (he was a heavy smoker off-stage of course) and is only once known to have lectured in a white suit (that being in front of Congress). One reason he made these changes was to stop people from stealing his act: he couldn’t copyright the Twain material but he has challenged people who do a Twain show with a cigar and a white suit.
That is an excellent movie.
This version is also chilling.
Everybody in Deadwood.
Agreed, one of the most frightening movies I’ve ever seen. And, surfing the Zeitgeist, It has cuddly Colin Firth as an ice cold DR. Stuckart.
It drips with malice, I am reminded of the phrase “The banality of evil”
John Hurt as Joseph “John” Merrick and Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Frederick Treves in THE ELEPHANT MAN.
As a rival to Charlton Heston as Moses, Ben Kingsley.
Although I’m sure a lot of people can’t help but see Matthew Broderick as, well, Matthew Broderick, he looks uncannily like Robert Gould Shaw in some pictures. And Broderick was far from his usual happy-g-lucky character in this film. I think he did a great job.
(Unfortunately, he doesn’t look as close in this photo, the only comparison photos I’ve found on the internet. In other pictures, he looks much more similar:
Sean Penn as Harvey Milk (Milk).
Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as Sid and Nancy
A great performance in a great film.
Interesting, I’d never heard a recording of the real Patton’s voice.
Patton starts speaking about a minute in. Much less gruff than Scott’s voice.
William Daniels actually looks very little like John Adams; Adams- though not tall- was taller than Daniels, bald, and so chubby that his colleagues often referred to him in absentia as “His Rotundity”. However, Daniels forever IS Adams as far as I’m concerned for the way he perfectly embodied the zealous, brilliant, passionate (in politics and in his marriage) and, most importantly, “obnoxious and disliked” founder in 1776 and in a couple of other movies where he had cameos. When Paul Giamatti, a fine actor, played him in the much longer and more historian-supervised miniseries I kept thinking “William Daniels could have done that so much better…”.
Brian Dennehy, who I normally like, was absolutely nothing like Bobby Knight in Season On The Brink. Horrible, horrible choice.
ETA: John Adams looked like a koala.
“Convincing” doesn’t do justice to Denzel Washington as Malcolm X. That was an amazing performance.
I wanted to second (or third, or whatever) Ben Kingsley and George C. Scott as Gandhi and Patton, respectively. Outstanding performances.