The December Team Top 10 at The Film Experience is up: the best performances nominated for the Lead Actor Oscar that didn’t win. I haven’t been this far off-consensus since its mated list, the best Best Actress nominees who lost, back in May. My tastes just that run that way, I guess, especially with my perennial pick for the single most overrated actor in history, giving the most overrated performance, at the top of the list.
Anyway, my own picks are these. The top 11 was solid as hell, but the runners-up list was about 25 names deep, so I can’t fairly say that the also-rans were definitely my 12-20, but they were the ones who stuck around the longest in my head
1. Al Pacino, The Godfather, Part II (1974)
2. Peter O’Toole, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) [on the TFE list]
3. Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (1941)
4. Charles Laughton, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
5. Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot (1959) [on the TFE list]
6. James Stewart, Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
7. Walter Huston, Dodsworth (1936)
8. John Garfield, Body and Soul (1947)
9. Russell Crowe, The Insider (1999)
10. Paul Newman, Hud (1963)
First runner-up
Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove (1964) [on the TFE list]
Other runners-up, chronologically
William Powell, The Thin Man (1934)
Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca (1943)
James Stewart, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
James Mason, A Star Is Born (1954)
Spencer Tracy, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Rod Steiger, The Pawnbroker (1964)
Peter O’Toole, The Lion in Winter (1968) [on the TFE list]
Liam Neeson, Schindler’s List (1993)
Nicholas Cage, Adaptation. (2002)