10 Iconic Performances

They are roles that are iconic in that an actor is important as a symbol to a given role.  We can't think of anyone else in the role at all.  It's a role that an actor or actress owns and history, at least, proves it.  These are roles that define the actor who played them.  In fact, I am given to saying they don't so much play the roles as they just are these characters.  They are pure perfection.

Outlined are 10 of them.  I can see two immediate issues...  why not more and why these particular 10?  Well, there certainly could have been some more but time (yours and mine) limits the number.  Why these 10?  I dunno.  I guess when I thought of roles that qualified for this piece, I thought of these people first.  I am guessing most readers won't have a problem with most of the folks I've named.

Once I'd come up with the 10, I found it kind of fascinating that there are seven actresses and only three actors.  I suppose it points out my long-held belief that acting seems to fit the talents of women more than men.  Nonetheless, actor or actress, I was blown away by these 10 performances.  Six of them, by the way and not so surprisingly, won Oscars and many other awards.  Let's see who they are:

Vivien Leigh
as Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone with the Wind, 1939

Is this one of the most famous characters in the history of movies (and novels, for that matter) or what?!?!  It even came with undeniably the most famous talent search ever conducted to fill a role.  The winner had to be perfection itself if fans of the book were to be satisfied and the film hoped to be a success.  Every actress except Marjorie Main and Lassie auditioned and it was almost offered to Paulette Goddard who, frankly, would have been good.  And then Vivien Leigh (and her agent, the brother of the film's producer) walked on the set (filming had begun without a Scarlett).  Like Scarlett, Leigh was coquettish, willful, charming, controlling and just a bit mad... and a marriage between actress and character was sealed for eternity. 


  


Bette Davis
as Margo Channing in
All About Eve, 1950

Here is an actress who's given so many superb performances that it could make one dizzy trying to name just one.  But I say look a little further and surely one would name Margo Channing as the actress' most iconic role.  To play an aging, threatened grand dame of the theater was something the actress knew something about if we substitute theater for movies.  Her latest roles weren't so hot and adding to it, she wasn't the one first hired here... Claudette Colbert was (I can't imagine).  When Colbert threw her back out, in came Davis.  Frankly, I think Tallulah Bankhead could have mastered the part as well and Davis clearly patterned Margo after her.  It is a brilliant, brilliant performance, full of ego, temperament, conceit, power and a host of other colorful diva terms.

Marilyn Monroe
Lorelei Lee in 
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953

Here is THE movie that provided MM with world-wide fame and to this day the tantalizing little knitwit-golddigger with a lust for diamonds remains secure in her placement on anyone's list for iconic roles.  Who hasn't seen scores of times over a lifetime her famous performance of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend (Tiffany's... Cartier... talk to me, Harry Winston), cherished and imitated and right up there with the best movie-musical moments in history?  There was a light that illuminated deep within Marilyn.  I was transfixed by her beauty while finding her to be a gifted comedienne and the premier sex goddess of all time.  And she gave it all to Lorelei.  While the world fed on the dumb blonde bit, the character is adorable and no actress at the time could have pulled it off as successfully.  

Yul Brynner
as the King of Siam in
The King and I, 1956

Iconic?  Oh my goodness, yes.  Any actor who has played this role since would have to deal with the long shadow of Yul Brynner.  He owned it before the film was made while winning a Tony on Broadway.  There was never any thought given to someone else getting the screen version.  After the film was over, he played it time and time again on the stage.  I was happy to have seen one of those performances at the Pantages in Hollywood with a divine Constance Towers as Miss Anna.  Furthermore, he never made a film where he displayed such flawlessness.  Like the king, Brynner was always a pompous ass, full of himself, discourteous to others, temperamental, with a fierce need to control.  Or in other words, the perfect actor for the role. 

Tony Perkins
as Norman Bates in
Psycho, 1960

Only those born under a rock would not know who played Norman Bates in the original Psycho.  Conversely, some could name Psycho as the only Tony Perkins film whose title they could remember.  Hitchcock likely chose him because of his numerous physical oddities... twitches, tics, nervousness, halting speech, deer-in-the-headlights manner and his penchant for staring.  Spooky comes to my mind and I have no doubt Hitchcock saw it, too.  I suspect part of the appeal found in playing the character is that Norman was hiding something and in real life, Perkins was, too.  Sadly, this sick role is so identified with the actor, he did such a fine job, that Perkins' career never recovered from playing it.  

Gregory Peck
as Atticus Finch in
To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962

This is one of the most mythic, inspirational, heroic characters in the history of movies and the only movie dad I can recall that I wanted to be mine.  Atticus Finch's goodness, virtue, restraint and sense of right and wrong seem to go hand-in-hand with the gifted actor chosen to play him, Gregory Peck.  The actor very well may have seen Atticus' fight for justice as something he understood only too well.  In a megawatt career, he has never been better... it is a performance tailor-made for one of Hollywood's giants.  Peck would win the only Oscar of his long career for playing Atticus so deftly.  There can be no doubt why the American Film Institute in 2003 chose Atticus Finch as the greatest American hero of the 20th Century.

Liza Minnelli
as Sally Bowles in
Cabaret, 1971

What good is sitting alone in your room and trying to imagine anyone else playing Sally Bowles on the big screen other than Liza?  She IS Sally.  Frankly, I am astonished that other actresses attempt the part on the stage.  Obviously Liza invested the role with all her own characteristics so, to a degree, it's Liza playing Liza.  Sally, of course, is flighty and manic, light and dark, looking for love and excitement in all the wrong places and with the wrong men.  No wonder Liza was a shoo-in to play her.  Had she not won the Oscar, it would have been one of that organization's great injustices.  This role is so iconic that it's little wonder this gifted performer has never had another role or film that comes close to touching it.

Jessica Lange
as Frances Farmer in
Frances, 1982

This remains one of the most staggering performances I have ever seen in a film.  Frances is about the profoundly sad and corrupted life of one of Hollywood's first bad girls and played by the magnificent Lange so beautifully, tough, intelligently and steadfastly.  The actress said... once I started on Frances I discovered it was a bottomless well.  It devastated me to maintain that for 18 weeks, to be immersed in this stage of rage for 12 to 18 hours a day.  It spilled all over, into other areas of life.  When the film was finished, Lange had to take a long rest to shake off Frances Farmer.  I think she would have won the Oscar for this film, too, if it just hadn't come in the same year as the next lady.

Meryl Streep
as Sophie Zawistowska in
Sophie's Choice, 1982

This sad film leaves us a legacy with the incomparable performance of its leading lady.  I have no problem with those claiming she is the best actress to ever grace a silver screen and this performance is the benchmark for that claim.  Both breathtaking and heart-breaking, Streep allows us to understand Sophie in dollops of great insight as she balances fragility with strength, bitterness with forgiveness, exposing every possible emotion in the process.  Her boardinghouse relationships with a paranoid schizophrenic and a young would-be author are at the center of this tragic WWII story that concerns the film's title.

Marion Cotillard
as Edith Piaf in
La Vie en Rose, 2007

Another of those master class performances, Marion Cotillard brings to life France's treasured Little Sparrow, chanteuse Edith Piaf.  I am among those who consider this one of the most glorious performances ever put on film.  In playing an icon, Cotillard became one.  Hair, makeup and some magic transformed the beautiful, nearly 5'7" Cotillard into the homely 4'9" Piaf but the actress inhabited the singer so completely that one sits in that theater certain this is archived footage of Piaf.  Piaf's haunting life was a tragedy fueled by alcohol and by the time this film is over, one is exhausted.  Cotillard won the Oscar everyone knew she would, becoming only the second actress to do so in a foreign language film.




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MGM's biggest problem star