Introduction
Who are the greatest actors and actresses of all-time? Is Denzel Washington a greater actor than Paul Newman? How does Meryl Streep compare to Katharine Hepburn? Personal preferences would provide lots of different answers. To see who has the best acting skills, we would need to see every thespian play the same role, in the same scene, on the same set, with the same cast and director.
It would be awesome to see the greatest actors and actresses doing their take on the same movie scene. Who would not want to see acting legends such as John Wayne, Joan Crawford, Marlon Brando, or Doris Day playing Meg Ryan’s famous restaurant scene in When Harry Met Sally (1989)? Unfortunately, that cannot happen. However, there is a way to compare movie stars. We can use statistics.
No matter when a movie was made, the goals have always been the same. Movies are made to make money for the producers while entertaining or educating audiences. Impressing critics and winning awards is a welcome honor. There are three main groups of movie statistics: Box office grosses, reviews, and award recognition. When looking at all three groups together, you can see how well or poorly a movie performed. Like a quarterback in football, the success or failure of a movie falls on the stars of the movie.
Using those three groups of statistics, we compared the careers of the greatest actors and actresses. This Top 50 Movie Stars list is the end result of that comparison. Is it a perfect list? Of course not. Will you agree with some of the rankings? We hope so. Are some notable people not on our list? Definitely. Will you think some of the rankings are horrible and question our thought process? I am sure you will…..but……that is what lists are born to do…..make people argue.
PB
How We Got Here
As a child, I was very interested in baseball and movies. As I got older, I was fascinated with baseball statistics and movie box office grosses. This fascination led me to lots of very knowledgeable people.
On the baseball side, I read anything Bill James wrote. James is the godfather of baseball stats. He created mathematical formulas that changed how people viewed, played, and managed baseball. On the movie side, I became a weekly Variety reader, a weekly viewer of Sneak Previews with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, a fan of Joel Hirschhorn’s Book Rating The Movie Stars , and a constant moviegoer.
Sometime in 2010, for the millionth time, I was looking at my Rating The Movie Stars book, when I wondered if Joel had updated his ratings lately. A quick Internet check provided the sad news that Mr. Hirschhorn had passed away in 2005.
About a month later, I thought, “I could update the ratings!” Thinking about Bill James’ baseball formulas, I decided to come up with an algorithm to rate movies. This decision would lead me to start my own movie website. Ultimate Movie Rankings.com (UMR) has been ranking movies since 2011.
We have been collecting, categorizing, and storing movie stats for almost ten years. Originally, all the stats collected were being written in notebooks. Luckily, my better half, realized a database would be a better place to store the statistics. She created a database that has now stored movie stats on over 36,000 movies. Each movie, whether it was made in 1932 or made today, includes box office grosses, reviews, and awards.
Our UMR mathematical formula generates a score from 1 to 100 for each movie, allowing comparison between movies made decades apart. Now my wife and I can argue over the merits of her favorite movie, The Sound of Music (1965), and one of my favorites, Pulp Fiction (1994), using the same scoring criteria.
PB
Factors Used in UMR Score
- Box office results. Receives the second highest percentage (31%) of the equation. The ceiling is $200 million in adjusted for inflation dollars. Any movie that crossed $200 million maxed out the points in the category. We use adjusted box office, so it would be easier to compare a movie made years ago to movies made today.
- Critics and audience reception. Receives the highest percentage (47%) of the equation. So where do I find critics/audience reception? We use many different sources: RottenTomatoes, IMDb, MetaCritic, Yahoo Movies, Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and Fandango. Put them all together and we get an average review rating, 100% being the highest score possible. You Tube video critic Chris Stuckmann, has replaced the late great Roger Ebert in our calculations when looking at current movies.
- Award Recognition. The final part of the equation is worth 22%. A movie gets points for Golden Globe® and Oscar® nominations and wins. The Golden Globes® get 3.75% while the Oscars® get 18.25% of the equation.
Box Office Results (31%) + Reviews (47%) + Awards (22%) = UMR Score.
These three factors were determined by figuring out what a movie’s producer is hoping their movie accomplishes. The first goal that the producer would want would be for the movie to be successful at the box office and profitable at the end of the day. Secondly, the producer would like both the professional critics and moviegoers to enjoy their movie. And finally the producer would like the movie to receive award recognition through Golden Globe® and Oscar® awards.
For a movie to be rated well in our mathematical equation, it has to do well in all three categories. Of the thousands of movies we have rated, only 8 have a perfect 100 score.
Top 10 UMR Movies |
|
| The Godfather (1972) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| Gone With The Wind (1939) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| Schlinder’s List (1993) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| On The Waterfront (1954) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| Ben-Hur (1959) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| Casablanca (1942) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| The Return of the King (2003) | 100.00 UMR Score |
| One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | 99.99 UMR Score |
| The Godfather Part II (1974) | 99.99 UMR Score |
An Example of UMR Rating Formula
Let’s look at one of the best movies that featured one of my favorite actors: Bruce Willis’s The Sixth Sense (1999).
Figure 2 – UMR Database – Picture from UltimateMovieRankings.com
#1 Shows the original domestic box gross ($291 million) and its adjusted box office gross ($516 million) based on today’s average movie ticket price. Those massive grosses easily max out the points (31% of equation) in the box office category. Of a possible 31 points, it earned the maximum of 31 points.
#2 Shows the different sources (IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritics) we used to get a review percentage for The Sixth Sense (1999). Put all of those reviews together and you end up with a 81.4% review rating. Of a possible 47 points, it earned 37.60 points.
#3 Shows how well The Sixth Sense (1999) did with major awards. Awards is the third and final part of the equation. The Sixth Sense (1999) earned 6 Oscar® nominations, including a Best Picture nod. It did not win any Oscars® and was ignored by the Golden Globes®. Of a possible 22 points, it earned a total of 9.15 award points.
#4 Shows the end result of the equation. When you add up the total points for #1, #2, and #3, you end up with 78.25 points. When comparing that total with all the movies in the database you end up with a 98.82 percentile score.
So what does a 98.82 percentile mean? Well, let’s find out. We have 36,123 movies in the database. 36,123 times 98.76% equals 35,675. That means there are 35,675 movies that earned fewer points than The Sixth Sense. Another way to look at it would be by saying the The Sixth Sense (1999) is the 448th best movie in our database.
Figure 3 – Bruce Willis – Drawing by DoC2
So let’s see if Bruce Willis has the stats to crack the Top 50. Willis has 72 movies in the database. His Top 25 UMR movies (best combination of box office, reviews and awards) are listed on the next page.
If we add up all the UMR points, we see he earned 2,144 points. When we divide that by 25, we get an average UMR score of 85.76. Now we need to look at his acting honors. His only major acting honor is a Golden Globe® nomination for In Country (1989). That did nothing for his score, as In Country (1989) did not make his Top 25. That leaves his UMR score at 85.76.
A 85.76 UMR average score would be 74th best average of all the stars that qualified. A deecent finish for him, but not good enough to make our Top 50.
PB
Top 25 UMR Score Bruce Willis Movies
Movies with best box office, reviews and awards
| Rank | Movie (Year) | UMR Score |
| 1st | Pulp Fiction (1994) | 99.68 |
| 2nd | The Sixth Sense (1999) | 98.82 |
| 3rd | Die Hard (1988) | 97.51 |
| 4th | Over the Hedge (2006) | 94.68 |
| 5th | Die Hard 2 (1990) | 94.14 |
| 6th | Live Free or Die Hard (2007) | 94.01 |
| 7th | Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) | 92.07 |
| 8th | Twelve Monkeys (1995) | 90.78 |
| 9th | Unbreakable (2000) | 90.10 |
| 10th | Look Who’s Talking (1989) | 90.02 |
| 11th | Armageddon (1998) | 88.04 |
| 12th | Sin City (2005) | 87.92 |
| 13th | Looper (2012) | 86.98 |
| 14th | Nobody’s Fool (1994) | 86.70 |
| 15th | Moonrise Kingdom (2012) | 85.64 |
| 16th | The Fifth Element (1997) | 85.63 |
| 17th | Red (2010) | 84.06 |
| 18th | The Expendables 2 (2012) | 80.35 |
| 19th | Death Becomes Her (1992) | 79.82 |
| 20th | The Last Boy Scout (1991) | 77.44 |
| 21st | G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) | 74.71 |
| 22nd | Glass (2019) | 74.01 |
| 23rd | Disney’s The Kid (2000) | 71.50 |
| 24th | Bandits (2001) | 70.13 |
| 25th | The Whole Nine Yards (2000) | 69.49 |
PB
So it was time to find out the Top 50 Movie Stars Statistically Speaking. The movie database calculated the UMR scores of over 36,000 movies and over 10,000 different actors and actresses. Some of the results are listed below.
| Rank | Star |
| 1st | James Dean |
| 2nd | John Cazale |
| 3rd | Grace Kelly |
| 4th | Judy Holliday |
| 5th | Charlie Chaplin |
| 13th | Thelma Ritter |
| 16th | Sydney Greenstreet |
| 23rd | Thomas Mitchell |
| 27th | Walter Brennan |
| 34th | Claude Rains |
| 38th | Charles Laughton |
| 49th | Barry Fitzgerald |
| 95th | Jack Nicholson |
| 102nd | Clint Eastwood |
| 136th | John Wayne |
Gotta say, I was pretty underwhelmed by this list. A quick look at the rankings revealed some issues. The top 5 is a solid list for sure, but with a combined total of 40 movies, it seemed that the low number of movies really helped their UMR averages.
Another issue with the initial rankings were the amount of supporting actors and actresses. I love Thelma Ritter, Sydney Greenstreet, Thomas Mitchell, and all the others, but they are not movie stars. If I was making a list of the greatest character actors of all-time, they would be some of the first people I would pick.
On even further review, many actors that are considered to be legends, such as John Wayne, were near the bottom of the rankings. I noticed that if an actor or actress had over 40 movies, their UMR averages seemed to be very low.
We also realized that individual acting Oscar® and Golden Globe® nominations and wins should be factored into the UMR scores.
The final result of the first test run? It became clear we were going to have to include some guidelines in the rankings.
The Guidelines
- Cameos, television roles, and movies not released in the United States were excluded from the rankings. World-Wide box office figures were much harder to find and less reliable, so U.S. Domestic was used. Sadly, movies that have unknown box office grosses were also excluded from the rankings, since a box office gross is needed to calculate the UMR score.
- We included a feature that we do not use on the website anymore. That feature gives credit for individual nominations and awards such as Best Actor/Actress. An actor can earn up to 10 additional points per movie. Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, and Jack Nicholson benefited the most from the inclusion of this feature.
- An actor or actress had to have appeared in a minimum of 25 movies. That left out some great stars like Daniel Day-Lewis, Montgomery Clift, Marie Dressler, Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Barbra Streisand, and the Marx Brothers.
- The Top 50 Movie Stars needed to be leading actors and actresses. That excluded the supporting performers above and other favorites like Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester, Samuel L. Jackson, and Roddy McDowall.
- Only the performer’s top 25 highest rated UMR movies are used in the rankings. This benefited John Wayne, Myrna Loy, and Robert Mitchum.
Once we had determined the guidelines to use, we queried the database to rank all of the actresses and actors that reached those criteria. Overall, 647 different people qualified. When we reviewed the top 50, the list finally looked like a winner. We decided to roll with it.
Feel free to add your comments to the website on a page dedicated to this book. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/top-50-movie-stars
PB
Figure 4 – UMR TagLine – Picture from UltimateMovieRankings.com
Things to know about the upcoming countdown.
Before we start the countdown.
- Our Honorable Mention section, shows in ranking order, the next 25 actors and actresses, who just missed our Top 50. Al Pacino, Laurence Olivier, Claudette Colbert & Jane Fonda were the first ones to miss our Top 50.
- When looking at Golden Globe® tallies, we are only listing movie roles, no television roles.
- When looking at Oscar® nominations and wins, we are only listing acting nominations.
- “100” is the top score for Best Review Percentage and UMR Score.
- Adjusted Domestic Box Office totals are calculated using ticket sold and average movie admission prices. Currently, the final 2018 ticket price has not been announced, so we are still using the average ticket price of 2017 in our calculations.
PB
25 Actors and Actresses Who
Just Missed The Top 50
| Actors | Actresses |
| Al Pacino | Claudette Colbert |
| Laurence Olivier | Jane Fonda |
| Kirk Douglas | Shirley MacLaine |
| Matt Damon | Shirley Temple |
| Fredric March | Susan Hayward |
| Wallace Beery | Ingrid Bergman |
| Fred MacMurray | Cate Blanchett |
| Robert Taylor | Diane Keaton |
| Dean Martin | Rosalind Russell |
| Ray Milland | Jane Wyman |
| James Mason | Deborah Kerr |
| Bruce Willis | Mary Pickford |
| Dana Andrews | Loretta Young |
| David Niven | Marlene Dietrich |
| Anthony Quinn | Maureen O’Sullivan |
| Robert Downey Jr. | Betty Grable |
| Ronald Colman | Natalie Wood |
| Robert Young | Julia Roberts |
| Bill Murray | Irene Dunne |
| Mel Gibson | Maureen O’Hara |
| Eddie Murphy | Lana Turner |
| Edward G. Robinson | Maggie Smith |
| Alan Ladd | Marilyn Monroe |
| Johnny Depp | Sandra Bullock |
| Tony Curtis | Jean Arthur |
PB
Nice introduction to your book. I am ordering the book.
As you know I purchased my own copy of your book and am on record as acknowledging what a fine reference source it is; in fact I consult it all the time.
There was of course a lot to take in when I first got my hands on it and I think I said I would let you have further comments when I had become even more familiar with it.
Your reaching the 22 million site views benchmark seems the appropriate time to return to the subject of your book and I wish to place on record that I have found it more invaluable than I even at first imagined it to be; OVERALL – so when I write now I really feel the need to highlight just one aspect that particularly pleased me: the inclusion of Doris, Bing, Hope and Sinatra in your 50.
None of these 4 screen Giants are included in AFI lists of movie all-time 50 Greatest Legends or indeed in any other proclaimed lists of the movie Greats that I am immediately aware of.
EXPANDED in PART 2 POST
PART ONE CONTINUED [By the way wonderful observation by Nathan Quinn in his 9.13am poston 1 Oct last year just below these posts of mine – Hirsch sure has a lot to answer for!]
Yet Crosby and Hope were mega household names who were easily in the top-star bracket of the likes of Tracy, Gable and The Duke, whatever precise pecking order one would place those stars in; and Sinatra who gets more accolades as a singer than as an actor was so big as a movie star that Tracy said around 1961 that “Frank has more power in the Hollywood of today than the old studio moguls like Louis B Mayer had in THEIR eras. ”
And my Doris was one of the few really top female stars of the fifties and sixties whose name could be guaranteed to “open” a film in those decades and she along with Al Leach on the male side virtually “owned” Quigley for years.
So congratulations to your book for recognizing the entitlement of those 4 stars to be included among the ones perceived as the 50 greatest legends to date.
Also, you and I will always disagree about precisely HOW BIG Myrna Loy was; but she was certainly a greater cinematic force that the likes of Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren and Betty Bacall and in my opinion has a greater claim to Top 50 Legends status than any of THEM, who unfortunately from my viewpoint AFI did include.
”Cagney, Brando, Katherine Hepburn and Mitchum are certainly legends, as is the likes of Clint Eastwood among stars still alive. However Laureen Bacall is NOT a legend.” English and United Kingdom author, journalist and TV presenter of the series The Hollywood Greats, Barry Norman [OUR Joel!] giving his personal mixed reaction to the AFI lists when they came out.
WIKIPEDIA
The Hollywood Greats is a BBC Television series, which originally ran from 1977 to 1985. The film critic Barry Norman wrote and narrated a series of in-depth profiles on major Hollywood film personalities, in which he interviewed surviving associates. He was also responsible for a series called British Greats in 1980
Good stuff as always Bob. Good points on Doris Day. She was the queen of the box office for a long time. Crosby was the number one star in a row for 4 or 5 straight years. Hope’s career was legendary. Sinatra was like Tyrone Power or a modern day Tom Cruise….one hit movie after another….while not getting the credit for their lastind staying power. The Barry Norman profile’s sound interesting.
Further thoughts:
1/My own opinion is that snobbery has prevented the likes of Bing, Bob, Frank and Doris from being given their due in other ranking lists of serious Legends: they were possibly perceived as ‘light entertainers’ not worthy of consideration for providing a ‘heavy’ enough contribution to the silver screen to make the cut in the fine tuning of ranking lists.
2/It may be that Astaire and Gene Kelly, who it could also be argued were in the light entertainment bracket, are thought of more highly than the others because whilst there have been many great singers and comedians Fred and Gene, with their different styles to each other have long been perceived as the unique “gold standard” of great dancing not just on the screen but generally.
3/You have in my opinion highlighted another possible weakness in the AFI lists: splitting their 50 evenly between men and women, presumably for ‘politically correct’ reasons [like showering routine priests/nuns performances with Oscar Love].
4/Yet YOUR top 50 in the book conclusively illustrate in my perception that the male legends have always regrettably out-numbered the women. The split in your book is overall 40/10 respectively; and when modern performers are excluded the split in my judgement is 24/9 in favor of the males, depending where you consider “modern” begins.
5/AFI’s method is not ‘wrong’ if the priority is to give the two genders equal space; but I prefer your format – though how on earth did you get it past W o C and those ‘feminist’ pals of hers?
Hey Bob…..thanks for the kind words on our book. That brought a smile to my face. Glad that you like that those 4 are in the book. About to read part 2.
Fascinating book. Brando seems low but other than that I agree with the logic of the book.
Thank you Nathan….I greatly appreciate the feedback.
A friend of mine recently bought your book and recommended it to me. After reading this preview I decided to buy the book. Your website looks interesting as well never heard of it before.
Hey George….glad my book is still reaching people..and even more glad that you found our little mom and pop website. Please let us know what you think of the book. Thanks for buying the book.
I think it flows pretty well until the end. As Flora pointed out, there seems to be some issues there. Pretty sure you need to put the movie titles in italics. Very interesting seeing how you have been putting this together. Looking forward to the final product.
Hey In The Shadows…a little late…..but thanks for the input on the introduction of the book. And yes…the titles ended up with italics. Good stuff.