'Best Actors' List Has No Meryl, No Streep

Streep has given 'showy and overdone' performances, critic says
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 5, 2020 3:30 PM CST
Look Who Didn't Make NYT 's Best-Actors List
Actor Denzel Washington listens as actress Cicely Tyson makes a tribute to him during the 47th AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Washington at the Dolby Theatre, Thursday, June 6, 2019, in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

A list of the 21st century's top actors, without Meryl Streep? "There are few better ways to court the internet's ire," reports the New York Times. But the paper's two top film critics did just that: Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott assembled their list of the 25 best movie actors of the past 20 years without ever mentioning a "Meryl" or a "Streep." Scott explains that Streep "has given some very fine performances" since 2000, "but she's also given some not very good ones that are showy and overdone," like Violet Weston in August: Osage County and Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Dargis says it's similar to Daniel Day-Lewis, who was "amazing" in There Will Be Blood but less so in Nine—though he did make the list. Now, their top 10:

  1. Denzel Washington
  2. Isabelle Huppert
  3. Daniel Day-Lewis
  4. Keanu Reeves
  5. Nicole Kidman
  6. Song Kang Ho
  7. Toni Servillo
  8. Zhao Tao
  9. Viola Davis
  10. Saoirse Ronan
(Click for the next 15.)

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