“I wasn’t aware of the specifics of what he was doing,” remembers Brando’s co-star Eva Marie Saint.

“You couldn’t be. But it was such an irresistible thing, his little shake of the eyes...”

Look closely at Brando’s turn as washed-up boxer turned struggling longshore brute: the weight of each syllable, the twitch of body language, the flicker of facial expression.

Inspired and instinctive, his masterful, choked inarticulation animates and expands every word in the script, most staggeringly in the taxi-cab scene in which he discovers his smarter brother has betrayed him. Perfection.

Greatest Moment: “It was you, Charlie.” Taxi!

Also see: Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), Kenneth Wilcheck (The Men), Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather), Paul (Last Tango In Paris).