These days, they say that life begins at fifty – and reaching the half-century milestone certainly hasn’t dulled the edge of these ten actors. From action heroes to Method men to character aficionados, check out our list of seasoned thespians.
10. Colin Firth
Having come to prominence as the dashing Mr Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Colin Firth was soon making bigger waves in film, with winning performances in The English Patient (1996), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001). But it was his excellent, nuanced turn as Bertie – the future King George VI – in Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech (2010) that earned him an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
9. Ed Harris
Whether in supporting roles as the hard-as-nails boss of an underwater oil rig in The Abyss (1989) and the megalomanic creator of a massive reality TV set in The Truman Show (1999), or as a leading man in biopics like Pollock (2000), four-time Academy Award nominee Ed Harris is endlessly watchable. In recent years, Harris has been just as active in TV, playing the Man in Black in HBO’s Westworld (2016-22), for which he received his third Emmy nomination.
8. Matthew McConaughey
Critics raved over Matthew McConaughey’s Oscar-winning performance in 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club, but don’t miss McConaughey in Christopher Nolan’s scifi spectacular Interstellar (2014), Civil War drama Free State of Jones (2014), and comedy Magic Mike (2013) – three towering performances that proved McConaughey’s substantial range as well as his innate likeability. His latest film, crime thriller The Rival of Amziah King, is currently in production.
7. Christoph Waltz
Christoph Waltz’s collaborations with Quentin Tarantino cast him as villain and hero respectively; in Inglourious Basterds (2009) he played a sadistic Nazi, while in Django Unchained (2012) he stars as a bounty hunter who helps a slave (Jamie Foxx) to find his estranged wife. Both performances won Academy Awards, but fans would do well to seek out more recent work, such as this year’s Australian fantasy comedy The Portable Door, in which Waltz puts in a delightfully devilish turn as the CEO of a company hellbent on applying corporate strategy to the world of magic.
6. James Earl Jones
The now retired voice of Darth Vader is bona fide Hollywood royalty, being one of the very few actors to get the acting “Grand Slam” of an EGOTISTICAL, or Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar, and Tony. It’s no surprise when one considers his amazing pedigree, with knockout performances in The Great White Hope (1970), Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and countless others. Now in his ninth decade, Jones may have bowed out of Star Wars but otherwise shows no signs of slowing down, most recently reprising his role in Eddie Murphy favorite Coming to America (1988) in 2021’s sequel.
5. Anthony Hopkins
To many, Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins will forever be Hannibal Lecter, the deranged serial murderer with very particular tastes in cuisine who played a game of psychological cat-and-mouse with Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1990). But Hopkins’ work is far more extensive: excellent work as a repressed butler opposite would-be love Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day (1993) showed an aptitude for pathos, and his brilliant portrayal of Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone’s 1995 biopic was inexplicably overlooked for the Best Actor Oscar. Hopkins went one better in 2021, carrying off his second Academy Award for his moving performance as a man succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease in 2020’s The Father.
4. Robert De Niro
Few actors have attained such prominence as two-time Academy Award winner Robert De Niro. Celebrated collaborations with directors such as Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma stand as testimony to his ease with crime and gangster movies, and his more recent segue into comedy is just as well-known (though perhaps less celebrated). But one of De Niro’s finest performances was in neither genre: look out for his Oscar-nominated work opposite Robin Williams as a catatonic medical facility resident in Penny Marshall’s excellent Awakenings (1990).
3. Denzel Washington
With ten Oscar nominations including two wins, Denzel Washington’s credentials can’t be faulted. Those wishing to take a closer look at the actor’s best performances will be hard pressed to choose between dozens of great turns: as a determined Civil War soldier in Glory (1989), as Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic, or as an alcoholic airline pilot in Flight (2012). Few Hollywood actors have been so consistently on top of their game for so long.
2. Tom Hanks
The two-time Academy Award winner may have begun in comedy, but by the mid-1990s he was already showing remarkable range. His work playing a gay lawyer with AIDS who sued his employers for discrimination in Philadelphia (1993) bagged him his first Oscar, and further roles in box office smashes, such as astronaut Jim Lovell in Apollo 13 (1995), a World War II U.S. Army captain in Saving Private Ryan (1998), and a marooned plane crash survivor in Cast Away (2000) further impressed critics. More recent roles in the much underrated scifi epic Cloud Atlas (2012) and the Western News of the World (2020) only underscored his versatility as Hanks progresses to being one of Hollywood’s most revered elder statesmen.
1. Daniel Day-Lewis
The only man in history to win three Academy Awards for Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis has a fearsome reputation as one of Hollywood’s most committed actors. His trio of Oscar wins – for work as a cerebral palsy sufferer in My Left Foot (1989), an oilman in search of money and power in There Will Be Blood (2007), and most notably as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s magisterial biopic Lincoln (2012) – remain without peer.