Yet some go further still, whether it's using their fame as a platform for advocacy and breaking through racial or social barriers, or shifting the film industry itself and evolving the way we think about acting.
1. Olivia de Havilland
Key films: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939)
“Hollywood owes Olivia a great deal,” remarked her sister and fellow actress Joan Fontaine. For it was de Havilland’s legal battles in court, fighting in 1943 with studio Warner Bros, that produced a landmark result in favour of the performer. The De Haviland Law, as it became known, forbade employers from enforcing a contract for longer than seven years, a decision that gave new-found freedom to artists and severely reduced the power of the studios.
2. Charlie Chaplin
Hollywood’s most iconic silent movie star, thanks to his “Little Tramp” persona, Chaplin was a game-changer behind the scenes too. Seeking independence from the traditional studio system, he co-founded United Artists, alongside Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. Established in 1919, this studio was designed to offer Chaplin and others creative control over their material. “The inmates are taking over the asylum” remarked one executive, but this was a pioneering move.
A child star in 1930s Hollywood, Temple almost single-handedly rescued studio 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy. It was her experiences, alongside fellow actors like Jackie Coogan, that contributed to the passing of the California Child Actor’s Bill in 1939, ensuring 15% of a child’s earnings were set aside in a trust. Later moving into politics, representing the U.S. at the United Nations General Assembly, she continued to advocate for better and safer working conditions for child actors.
4. Bruce Lee
With a career that spans both Hong Kong and Hollywood, Lee became the first global Chinese superstar. A teacher before he was an actor, the San Francisco-born Lee developed ‘Jeet Kung Do’, a martial arts style heavily influenced by Buddhist and Taoist philosophies, which went overground when he began scoring roles in films like Enter the Dragon. Popularising Kung-Fu, Lee helped Asian actors gain a foothold in Hollywood. That he died aged 32 only increased the myth around him.
5. Tom Cruise
View Green Video on the source websiteThe last great Hollywood movie star, Cruise’s films have grossed $13.3 billion worldwide. But none was more important than his biggest hit, Top Gun: Maverick. The sequel to his 1986 aerial blockbuster Top Gun, its $1.5 billion haul reignited the global box office that’d been rocked by theatre closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. “You saved Hollywood’s ass and you might have saved theatrical distribution,” Steven Spielberg later said, echoing sentiments felt industry-wide. Cruise was cinema’s saviour in its hour of need.
Part of the Fonda acting dynasty, she was a two-time Academy Award winner and kickstarted the fitness craze with her best-selling VHS Jane Fonda’s Workout. But it’s her activism that gets here included here. Nicknamed ‘Hanoi Jane’, after she was photographed with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, she spoke out against the Vietnam War – a lone voice that caused opposition in America. Promoting civil rights, environmental causes and women’s issues, she also protested the Iraq war.
7. Sidney Poitier
The first Black man to win a best actor Oscar, for 1963’s Lilies of the Field, Poitier’s dignified and defiant characters mirrored his own life, as he emerged as one of the most important social justice activists of his generation. As hard-hitting as the slap he delivers to a white racist in Norman Jewison’s thriller In the Heat of the Night, Poitier broke down racial barriers, fighting against on-screen stereotypes and battling for Black civil rights off it.
8. Marilyn Monroe
A brilliant comedienne, and a shrewd businesswoman, Monroe smartly navigated Hollywood in ways few actresses had done, until her tragic death in 1962, aged 36. Among her many influences, her bombshell image helped precipitate the sexual revolution in mainstream media, as her curvaceous figure came to represent a joyous embracing of the body. Becoming a symbol of beauty and desire, she shaped fashion, art (think of Andy Warhol’s famed pop art Marilyn print) and modern-day feminism.
9. Robert Redford
The Hollywood golden boy of his generation, Robert Redford went on to become a fine filmmaker, winning a Best Director Oscar for his 1980 debut Ordinary People. But it was his work establishing the Sundance Film Festival shortly after that remains his high point. Championing independent cinema, launching the careers of the Coens, Steven Sodebrergh, Quentin Tarantino and more, Redford’s Sundance – named after his famed character in George Roy Hill’s western – became the focal point for America’s thriving indie scene in the Nineties.
Ashley Judd will always be remembered as the first actor to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. Judd was a key on-the-record source in Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker investigation that ultimately precipitated Weinstein’s downfall. Her revelations opened the floodgates as more victims of abuse came forward, leading to the formation of the MeToo movement – one of the most powerful calls for social change in the 21st century.
11. Andy Serkis
View Green Video on the source websiteFew actors can claim they pioneered an acting style. Yet Britain’s Andy Serkis took motion capture and performance capture to the next level. Rigged with sensors to record his every move and facial expression, his turn as wizened creature Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy turned the world onto this groundbreaking technology. Refining these skills in films like King Kong and Planet of the Apes, Serkis also co-founded The Imaginarium, a production company specialising in performance capture technology.
When Elizabeth Taylor was offered the lead in the 1963 epic Cleopatra, she orchestrated a deal that changed the way actors were paid. Fresh off her first Oscar win, for BUtterfield 8, she negotiated with Fox Studios a landmark payout for the role – $1 million and ten percent of the film’s gross profit. The first actor ever to make $1 million for a picture, she ultimately earned a lot more – close to $7 million – when compensation for delays in the shoot was taken into account.
13. Marlon Brando
The godfather of the Method, Brando ushered in a new approach to performance that prioritised naturalism in a quest for emotional truth, far removed from the more mannered and performative acting style that came before him. Taking the Method from an established theatre technique and into movie acting, Brando influenced a generation of actors (De Niro, Pacino et al) as he pursued an approach that dug into personal memories and sensations to bring a character alive.
A leading man in Hollywood’s Golden Age, Hudson’s eclectic and impressive career saw him jump from Douglas Sirk and Doris Day to Dynasty. But there was another reason to remember him. In 1984, Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS. A year later, he became one of the first celebrities to disclose his illness, shortly before his death, aged 59. It was a monumental moment, helping many to understand the seriousness of AIDS, then much misunderstood.
15. Reese Witherspoon
Actors set up production companies all the time, but few have been as successful as Reese Witherspoon. In 2016, the Legally Blonde star founded Hello Sunshine with the aim of focusing on female-driven stories. Hit after hit followed, with shows like Big Little Lies and The Morning Show. By 2021, Witherspoon sold a majority stake to Candle Media, with the company then valued at $900 million. Last year, she placed #82 on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women list.
16. Audrey Hepburn
An influence on fashion and femininity, the elfin Hepburn’s gold-standard career saw her win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award (yep, she’s an EGOT). But she was also a groundbreaking humanitarian. She became a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF in 1989, using her celebrity to spotlight crises in South America, Asia and Africa. Far more than a figurehead, she revolutionised how public faces could support such causes, taking on field missions in countries like Ethiopia, Somalia and Ecuador.
From a fruitful collaboration with the RSC to Hollywood glory, notably as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies, Sir Ian McKellen has continued to push boundaries on stage and screen. Yet it’s his work as a gay rights activist that, perhaps, should be considered his greatest achievement. In the late '80s, he co-founded LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall to fight against Section 28, a controversial ruling that banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools and other public realms.
18. Irrfan Khan
One of India’s most acclaimed and intelligent stars, Irrfan Khan’s 30-year career saw him elevated to global icon. “An enormously valuable bridge between South Asian and Hollywood cinema,” as The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw put it, he went from credible work in movies like The Lunchbox to major stardom when he featured in Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire and $1 billion hit Jurassic World. His premature death in 2020, aged 53, is one of modern cinema’s greatest tragedies.
Before Robin Williams signed on to play the Genie in Disney’s animated Aladdin, voice work for ’toons was done by specialists in the field, rather than famous actors. Williams changed all that. Improvising nearly 16 hours’ worth of material, Williams brought the same manic energy that he invested in his stand-up and films like Good Morning Vietnam. Meaning that the animators had to work to his outpourings, rather than the other way around, it set new standards in the industry.
20. Daniel Day-Lewis
View Green Video on the source websiteNo actor symbolises commitment to a role more than Daniel Day-Lewis. Doggedly remaining in character as cerebral palsy sufferer Christy Brown for My Left Foot, it set the tone for a career of utter immersion in his roles, which no contemporary comes close to matching. With My Left Foot winning the Irishman the first of a record three Best Actor Oscars (There Will Be Blood and Lincoln would follow), he has rarely made a misstep across a peerless body of work.
Artist Salvador Dalí called the works of seminal silent film actor-director Keaton “pure poetry”. More than that, “the great stone face” – as he was known thanks to his stoic, deadpan expression – transformed the medium. His wonderful physical comedy, performing all his own often formidable stunts, took silent cinema to new heights, creating a visual film language still in play today.
22. Leonardo DiCaprio
A teen heartthrob who became one of the biggest movie stars in modern Hollywood, DiCaprio became an early adopter of environmental causes, long before it was fashionable to go green. Establishing the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998, a body that currently supports over 35 conservation projects around the globe, he has sought to bring attention to climate change, and the fragile state of our forests and oceans. Eco-documentaries The 11th Hour and Before The Flood, which he produced, further reinforce his crusading credentials.
With 53 pictures to his name, Reagan’s screen presence may have been overshadowed by bigger stars of the era. But it was his second act, as a Republican political force, that made him one of the most influential actors of all time. After a spell as governor of California, Reagan rose to become the 40th President of the United States between 1981 and 1989. Ushering in Reaganomics, as America jostled with the Soviets in the Cold War, you might say he even paved the way for Donald Trump.
24. Katharine Hepburn
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Katharine Hepburn the greatest female star of classic Hollywood. It was probably the least they could do. In a six-decade career, Hepburn remains the record holder in her field – with four Academy Awards for her performances. Moreover, she came to reshape the way women were portrayed on screen. Refusing to play “hatchet murderesses or alcoholic mothers”, she carved out a niche playing intelligent, assertive, independent females in films like The African Queen. Hollywood’s not been the same since.
Few Black actresses broke racial barriers like Dandridge. The first Black woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her title role in 1954’s Carmen Jones, the first to feature on the cover of Life magazine, and the first to open at the Empire Room at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria, she opened doors for many to come. Later joining the National Urban League and the NAACP, Dandridge became a crucial voice in fighting prejudice in the entertainment industry.
26. Eddie Murphy
From stand-up and Saturday Night Live to leading man in films like Beverly Hills Cop – the highest-grossing movie of 1984 – Eddie Murphy shifted perceptions globally. Here, finally, was proof that a Black actor could open a movie to blockbuster numbers. Breaking down racial barriers that had blocked those who came before him, Murphy continued to use his power to promote fellow Black artists, with 1988’s comedy-romance Coming to America featuring an almost entirely African-American cast.
After establishing himself on Broadway, Astaire’s screen test at RKO didn’t go well. “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little,” a report was rumoured to have stated. But after pairing with dancer Ginger Rogers, making nine films together at RKO, Astaire revolutionised the way dance was portrayed in movies. Insisting on filming dance routines with a stationary, full-frame camera, showing dancers from head to toe, he also made sure these choreographed wonders were integral to the plot, rather than spectacle for its own sake.
28. Jackie Chan
View Green Video on the source websiteAs director Edgar Wright once said: “No matter how many people try and rip off Jackie Chan movies, there’s something they can’t rip off which is Jackie Chan himself,” Now 72, Chan is unique. The legendary actor, martial artist and stuntman popularised a fusion of action and comedy – not just in his native Hong Kong but worldwide. Laying the path for Asian stars to work in Hollywood, Chan’s death-defying dexterity has influenced everything from Kill Bill to John Wick.
One of the most significant actors ever to emerge from Asia, Toshiro Mifune is one of the first international Japanese superstars. Breaking stereotypes, he redefined the Samurai archetype for director Akira Kurosawa in key films like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, in turn inspiring the likes of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood for their Spaghetti western trilogy. Meanwhile, his work in Hidden Fortress was also instrumental as George Lucas built his screenplay for his Star Wars space opera.
30. Lucille Ball
A beloved staple of stage and screen, Ball and her her partner Desi Arnaz co-founded Desilu Productions, a pioneering television studio behind her show I Love Lucy and the likes of Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. After buying Arnaz out in 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major studio, which she sold five years later to Gulf+Western before it merged into Paramount. In 2020, Time magazine named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century for her achievements.
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