Sean Connery – “Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade” (1989)
It seems that there was never much consideration of who could play Henry Jones Sr., the father of Indiana Jones, beyond Sean Connery, but then who else could play Indy’s dad than James Bond? The premise for the third film in the franchise (and by some distance the best of the sequels) paired father and son in a globe-trotting quest for the Holy Grail, but as obvious a pick as Connery might have been, the script cannily casts him against type as a bookish, rather bewildered man who might have fed Jones’ love of history, but certainly doesn’t jump to action in the same way. He and Harrison Ford share a delightful odd couple chemistry, but it’s the unexpected pathos that the actor brings to a fusty, emotionally repressed man who still dearly loves his son that makes this one of Connery’s best screen performances.
Jeff Goldblum – “Jurassic Park” (1993)
Clearly knowing that the premise would be enough to make it a giant-sized blockbuster, Spielberg and Universal didn’t seem to feel much pressure to fill “Jurassic Park” with stars, and the film’s all the better for Sam Neill’s wry cynicism, Laura Dern’s stalwart smarts, and Richard Attenborough’s mad-professor/avuncular grandparent. But one of the film’s greatest special effects had to be Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm. An incorrigibly flirtatious rock-star mathematician, Malcolm’s role is in large part to address theme by talking about chaos theory and the potential for disaster, but in Goldblum’s hands —as ever, delivering each line reading as only he can, bringing wit and an unlikely heroism to a part that could easily have become a villain— he becomes a real character, and easily the most entertaining one in the movie. No wonder he became the focus of follow-up “The Lost World,” and it was noticeable how much “Jurassic World” missed him, or at least someone in a similar role.
Liam Neeson – “Schindler’s List” (1993)
Before he reinvented himself in his 60s as a man who punched people in interchangeable action hero form, Liam Neeson was a proper actor, finding his greatest role by teaming up with Spielberg by playing the title character in “Schindler’s List.” Oskar Schindler was incontrovertibly a hero, a man who saved the lives of a thousand of his Jewish employees during the Holocaust, but the brilliance of Neeson’s turn here is the way that he refuses to play the role as a hero —he’s a slick, people-pleasing capitalist above and beyond anything else when we meet him, interested only in making money, and not beyond hob-nobbing with Nazis in order to do so. But he can’t avoid his conscience forever, and the way that Neeson gradually lets Schindler become aware of what’s going on and then lets out a long-buried decency proves unbelievably moving. It’s a performance so good that one almost wishes that Neeson had played Abraham Lincoln for the director, as originally planned.
Ralph Fiennes – “Schindler’s List” (1993)
It feels odd to showcase a character as monstrous as Amon Goethe in a list like this, but such is the chilling ferocity of Ralph Fiennes’ performance in “Schindler’s List” that we were forced to separate the art from the reality. Fiennes was a virtual unknown when he was cast by Spielberg as the ice cold SS officer, but the actor doesn’t shy away from the unpleasantness of the role. It would have been very easy for him to drop into cliched Movie Nazi territory, but in attempting to find something like humanity in Goeth —the banal bureaucrat, the lonely man who relishes his friendship with Schindler— Fiennes steers away from it, and manages to make him even more terrifying, one of the truest embodiments of absolute evil ever seen on screen. The insignificance with which he treats taking a life is something that shakes you to the core.
