1. Cary Grant
For comedy timing, elegance, thriller sharpness and a certain ambiguity.
2. Katharine Hepburn
For her ability to bring tenderness and intelligence to farce and the heaviest drama.
3. Sir Alec Guinness
An actor with enormous range; for portrayals of inhibited emotion, fanaticism, for stillness and understatement.
4. Dame Judi Dench
Dame Judi can speak Shakespeare as though she had just invented the words herself. She has tremendous wit and incisiveness, and of course, the catch in her throat.
5. Robert de Niro
A great screen actor, primarily for the New Yorkers he has played for director Martin Scorcese.
6. Marlon Brando
The most imitated actor of several generations. He had an extraordinary ability to inhabit the character and rivet your attention.
7. Meryl Streep
For her range of characters and nationalities, and for her human intelligence.
8. Charles Laughton
A fat, ugly man with the most expressive face and body you could see on stage and screen.
9. Anna Magnani
A formidable Italian actress of stage and screen. With all her nerve endings on the outside, she could laugh and cry at the same time and express raw emotion with memorable fidelity.
10. Marcello Mastroianni
The perfect screen actor, a man who could embody world-weary sophistication and play high comedy. He made hundreds of films, but see La Dolce Vita and White Nights.
