GregHowley.com

A few days ago while listening to a podcast where Nicolas Cage was being discussed, someone mentioned that he was their favorite actor. That got me thinking. Who is my favorite actor?

I really can't limit it to just one. In thinking for a bit, I came up with five, although I'm sure there are actors I'm not thinking of who'd make the list if I spent longer thinking. Here's who I came up with.

Mahershala Ali - I probably first saw him on The 4400. He was one of my favorite characters, and I'm still burned up that the show didn't get more seasons. He appeared later in a very similar but short-lived show named Alphas.

Keeping with the superhero vibe, he appeared as a villain named Cottonmouth in the Netflix Marvel series Luke Cage, and then voiced Miles Morales's Uncle Aaron in Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse.

He was excellent in the third season of True Detective I never watched season 2, and couldn't finish season one despite everyone telling me that it was the best, but I did like season three.

Mahershala went on to voice a character in the excellent animated Amazon series Invincible, and had what was possibly the best line in the first season. When he's being carried through the air by Invincible, who's cradling him like a bride, he indignantly says "This is some bullshit" and I just about died laughing.

Most recently, Mahershala played one of the leads in the Netflix movie Leave the World Behind. I liked that movie, despite the fact that the direction was a bit odd. I watched it twice.

At some point, Mahershala Ali is slated to take over the role of the character Blade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Wesley Snipes, who has always played Blade up until now.

David Dastmalchian - I first recall seeing him play Kurt in Antman, in which he repeatedly speaks of the witch Baba Yaga, to hilarious effect. But he's exploded over the past few years. The guy has been in so so much. I won't be able to cover much of it here, so I'll hit my own highlights.

I remember him from DUNC, Oppenheimer, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, but by far my favorite role of his was as the polka dot man in The Suicide Squad. Absolutely hilarious.

Tatiana Maslany - I'll grant you that the bulk of my admiration for Tatiana Maslany comes from her work on Orphan Black, because she's so astoundingly good on that show. She played a number of clones who were all entirely different characters. And while the soccer mom's antics may have been my personal favorite, all of her characters were excellent. If you look at regular photos of her online, she's a chameleon - it feels like no two pictures look alike. Perhaps that's part of why she's good as an actress.

The only other thing I really know her from is She-Hulk: Attourney at Law. And while I do feel like her character in that was perhaps a bit too horny, I did like the show.

Natalie Portman - It's a bit of a shame that her talent be wasted in the Star Wars prequels, because she really is an amazing actress. While I've never seen Black Swan, which I'm aware I need to remedy, I first really recognized her talent when I saw her in V For Vendetta, which was then cemented when I saw the amazing Natalie Portman rap on SNL.

Her character Jane Foster in the Thor movies again felt like a waste, like she couldn't do much with what was in the script. But I did really like her in Annihilation.

Charlize Theron - The first thing I remember seeing Charlize Theron in was The Italian Job back in 2003, which was an amazing film with an amazing cast. She was in that film with Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Seth Green, Mos Def, Jason Statham, and the late great Donald Sutherland. I've seen in a dozen times and I'll watch it again.

She was in the so-so film Hancock beside Wil Smith, which had an excellent first half before going entirely off the rails for the second half of the film. I feel similarly unenthusiastic about Prometheus, which brought the Alien canon in a strange left-turn direction.

Everyone lost their shit over how amazingly good she was in Mad Max: Fury Road, but even on a rewatch, I haven't been able to appreciate that film as much as everyone else. I have yet to see Furiosa.

Atomic Blonde was incredibly good. She shows that she can hold her own in an action piece, which is what likely got her the role in The Old Guard, which I enjoyed, if not as much as Atomic Blonde. I'd put that film on a pedestal alongside Haywire, those two being the only films I can think of where a female action star has really sold the visual of defeating multiple attackers on-screen. It's been so often done poorly and so seldom done well, but Atomic Blonde really pulls it off.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that in the after credits of Dr Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, she makes a very brief appearance as a character named Clea, joining every other actor in my list as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

So who are my favorite actors? That's the five I've come up with, in alphabetical order by last name.