This week is an event by any estimation for anyone that really cares about movies, marking the arrival of the first film in three years from one of the most beloved and recognizable filmmakers in the history of the medium, Steven Spielberg. “Bridge Of Spies,” his Cold War drama about an attorney (Tom Hanks) negotiating a spy swap with the Soviet Union, hits theaters on Friday, and per our review and others, it’s another winner.
Spielberg’s career, especially of late, is divided between pure entertainment pictures and more prestige-y dramas —you can read our complete retrospectives of both here and here. But even in his more serious, awards-friendly fare, Spielberg is often seen as a technical filmmaker first and an actor’s director second, perhaps because only one actor has ever won an Oscar for a performance in a Spielberg movie (and that was in his last film, “Lincoln”).
This is a rather unfair view, seeing that even from the beginning, nearly 45 years ago, Spielberg’s been getting stellar performances from some of the world’s best actors. So, with “Bridge Of Spies” looking to put Hanks and Mark Rylance into the awards race this year, we’ve picked out the 25 best performances from Spielberg pictures. Take a look below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Dennis Weaver – “Duel” (1971)
He might not have the stature of some of Spielberg’s later leading men, but Weaver, the hero of the director’s first full-length feature, the man vs. truck drama “Duel,” had a long career behind him, with nine years on Western series “Gunsmoke” and a memorable cameo in “Touch Of Evil.” But Weaver undoubtedly found his trademark role here, and though the film’s a ruthlessly efficient and propulsive thriller, the actor finds plenty to play with here. Perpetually nervy and harassed and behind giant glasses and a ’70s stache, he’s the first Spielberg everyman (his surname’s even Mann), thrust into a situation beyond his control. But Weaver doesn’t just make him a blank: his David is frankly kind of an asshole, one whose interactions with people only become worse even as the consequences of his road rage come back to haunt him.
Goldie Hawn – “Sugarland Express” (1974)
Spielberg’s first made-for-theaters feature (“Duel” was a TV movie in the U.S, but released theatrically abroad), “Sugarland Express” is one of his most underrated pictures, and none more so than with the lead performance by Goldie Hawn. A gentler though undoubtedly melancholy take on the lovers-on-the-run subgenre popular at the time with “Bonnie & Clyde” and “Badlands,” it sees Hawn and William Atherton as Lou Jean and Clovis Michael Poplin, a Texas couple who kidnap a patrolman (Michael Sacks) in an attempt to retrieve their child from foster care. The actress was already an Oscar-winner by the time she made this, but few filmmakers have capitalized on both her world-class facility for shallow comedy and a less-tapped facility for tragedy. Everyone’s good here (special shoutout to Ben Johnson as the weary cop tracking them), but Hawn stands out.
Roy Scheider – “Jaws” (1975)
Like “Duel,” “Jaws” was a monster movie, but Spielberg’s trick with the genre was always to emphasize the humanity in the cast, and that’s rarely exemplified better than with Roy Scheider’s Chief Brody. He’s not some tortured antihero with an over-explained backstory —he’s just an ordinary family man trying to do his job as best as he can, the uncomplicated and decent dad everyone wishes they had. But Scheider (cast despite Spielberg’s post-“French Connection” worries that the actor would be too much of a tough guy) makes him into a real character, and while all three leads are excellent, it’s Brody you really root for —one can’t underestimate how much that his charming ‘mirroring’ with his son, or his wry understated line reading of “you’re going to need a bigger boat,” adds to the film.
Robert Shaw – “Jaws” (1975)
Brody might have been the lead of “Jaws,” but Robert Shaw’s Quint became the icon. Cast after Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden turned the film down (and after the buzz around his villainous turn in “The Sting”), Shaw took inspiration from one of the locals, Craig Kinsbury (who also played ill-fated fisherman Ben Gardner, of head-under-boat fame), and came up with one of cinema’s most authentically grizzled anti-heroes. Quint can be something of an asshole sometimes, but he’s an asshole for a reason —partly because of what he knows, and partly because of what he’s been through. Whoever wrote the famous Indianapolis scene (multiple people have claimed credit at various points), Shaw plays it like an aria, and definitively proved that Spielberg was just as deft with actors as he was behind the camera.