Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
With Joel and Ethan Coen’s Hail Caesar due to hit theaters this weekend, film lovers are once again given occasion to think upon the filmmakers’ rich history of films. In particular, the Coens have established quite the stable of actors and performances by some of the best actors of their era.
So whose work in Coens movie has been the most impressive? Which performances will the cast of Hail Caesar have to beat to be considered among the best of the best? We’ve picked the 50 best performances in Coens movies and ranked then from 50 to 1.
She doesn't get nearly enough to do in the Coens' farce about the CIA and personal training, but she showed such promise, bringing her icy reserve to a movie that probably could have used a bit more of it.
[Where to stream Burn After Reading]Photo: Everett Collection
Harrelson played the middle-man in all respects in No Country, never truly able to let loose with the ultimate villainy of Bardem or the quiet decency of Tommy Lee Jones, but he's an integral part of a great ensemble.
[Where to stream No Country for Old Men]Photo: Everett Collection
More effective for his hulking presence than anything else, Stormare is a good counterpoint to Steve Buscemi.
[Where to stream Fargo]Photo: Everett Collection
It was such a bummer to see a strong actress like Mulligan reduced to a two-dimensional harpy like she is here.
[Where to stream Inside Llewyn Davis]Photo: Everett Collection
Like Stormare, Cobb makes this list for his physically imposing presence alone. The Coens tend to return to this well, but they've never been more effective than Cobb was at portraying Hi's nightmare vision of a Lone Biker of the Apocalypse.
[Where to stream Raising Arizona]Photo: Everett Collection
He only gets that one scene, recording a song with Oscar Isaac and Justin Timberlake of all handsome people, but that "Please Mr. Kennedy" scene is perhaps the best in the film, and Driver's low-voiced peculiarity sells it.
[Where to stream Inside Llewyn Davis]Photo: Everett Collection
Until somebody gives her a role commensurate with her massive talent, we're going to have to learn to appreciate when Elizabeth Marvel shows up and utterly slays for one scene only. True Grit ends a note of cock-eyed defiance with Marvel as the adult Mattie.
[Where to stream True Grit]Photo: Everett Collection
Brolin is overshadowed by pretty much all his co-stars, but he's still game for the lead role anyway, selling a mixture of confidence and greed that somehow never turns the audience against him.
[Where to stream No Country for Old Men]Photo: Everett Collection
Somewhat disappointing considering the prospect of Damon's first work for the Coens, but LaBoeuf is a classic third wheel in the story.
[Where to stream True Grit]Photo: Everett Collection
Hall won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance here, and while that remains surprising and a bit puzzling, she's certainly doing the most entertaining work in the film. Her obsession with the song "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" is a particular delight.
[Where to stream The Ladykillers]Photo: Everett Collection
This was during the era where Tim Robbins was constantly getting overshadowed by his co-stars. And often for good reason. But he gives good rube in the Coens' screwball pastiche, and he knows enough to get out of the better actors' way.
[Where to stream The Hudsucker Proxy]Photo: Everett Collection
In the Coens' worst movie, Adelstein is the bright spot, playing George Clooney's co-counsel and sidekick with some great comedic energy.
[Where to stream Intolerable Cruelty]Photo: Everett Collection
Before her Lost in Translation year broke her out into the mainstream, Johansson had an impressive double dip in 2001 with the ultra-modern Ghost World and this particularly retro-looking Coens offering. Johansson's role, a teenager who catches Billy Bob Thornton's eye, might have been sordid or distasteful if she and the Coens didn't work so hard to make her feel like more of a subject than an object.
[Where to stream The Man Who Wasn't There]Photo: Everett Collection
Another noir mystery figure who probably could have had more to do, but if you're looking for a beautiful woman to intimidate the hell out of the man who's attracted to her, Judy Davis is your woman.
[Where to stream Barton Fink]Photo: Everett Collection
Durning really puts on a show as Pappy O'Daniel, southern politician who likes country music and despises anything that might keep him from getting re-elected.
[Where to stream O Brother, Where Art Thou?]Photo: Everett Collection
A breakthrough role in the least likely of places. McDormand shows unexpected grit and a determination to take a stock noir character (the unfaithful wife) and in conjunction with the Coens turn her into something wholly unexpected.
[Where to stream Blood Simple]Photo: Everett Collection
It's a brief role, but the way Turturro looks so unhinged as cocky bowler and all-around antagonist Jesus is the kind of colorful character-as-scenery work that you live for with the Coens.
[Where to stream The Big Lebowski]Photo: Everett Collection
Verna is a far more standard fit into the femme fatale archetype than some of the other twists that the Coens have produced, but Harden really crackles opposite Gabriel Byrne and Albert Finney.
[Where to stream Miller's Crossing]Photo: Everett Collection
Watching Blood Simple is a great way to make sure you'll spend the next few days wondering why Hedaya hasn't appeared in more Coens movies.
[Where to stream Blood Simple]Photo: Everett Collection
It's PAUL NEWMAN. A national treasure and gift to the silver screen. He's fantastic.
[Where to stream The Hudsucker Proxy]Photo: Everett Collection
Another main character who gets overshadowed by the big personalities surrounding him. Byrne never fully connects to the Coens' style, but his loose ends are pretty interesting.
[Where to stream Miller's Crossing]Photo: Everett Collection
The gruffness borders on caricature at times, but Bridges is one of the few actors big enough to represent the Western as a genre.
[Where to stream True Grit]Photo: Everett Collection
Hyper-stylized to the point of not sounding like a human being, but she's a scream, whether she's explaining what coitus is or laughing maniacally with her alr-trash friends.
[Where to stream The Big Lebowski]Photo: Everett Collection
The Coens do a great job with characters who are almost entirely ignorant of how awful they are, and Melamed's Sy Ableman is right near the top of that list.
[Where to stream A Serious Man]Photo: Everett Collection
Lerner's Oscar nomination is still a bit of a puzzler when it comes to the breadth of great performances in Barton Fink. Did they not remember John Goodman at all? Still, it's very solid work, and Lerner is the kind of character actor the Oscars should reward more often anyway.
[Where to stream Barton Fink]Photo: Everett Collection
The weird thing about George Clooney is that he's often not at his best while acting for the Coens. His best work comes in O Brother, as the head numbskull brother of a trio of numbskull brothers. The Clark Gable-esque cadences are loud and large, but the Coens often require an actor big enough to fill the spaces of the universes they create, and Clooney delivered.
[Where to stream O Brother, Where Art Thou?]Photo: Everett Collection
Thornton drastically underplays his role, at the risk of seeming unimpressive, but it's exactly what the role and the film requires. Disappearance into the story is literally the name of the game here, and Thornton is selfless enough to do it.
[Where to stream The Man Who Wasn't There]Photo: Everett Collection
This is probably the definitive John Turturro role, skittish and tortured and angsty and victimized by the awful world around him.
[Where to stream Barton Fink]Photo: Everett Collection
This is a performance that deepens as the film goes on. At first it seems like cutesy kid acting, all stompy gestures and audience-pleasing one-liners. But as the movie goes on, Steinfeld displays a surprising amount of self-possession and even gravitas.
[Where to stream True Grit]Photo: Everett Collection
Shalhoub is the one showboat in a film full of stoics, and he really does the most with the spotlight he's given. He's the hotshot attorney in a movie where everybody ends up going to jail, and Shalhoub understands how to play that.
[Where to stream The Man Who Wasn't There]Photo: Everett Collection
It's deceptively difficult to portray the avatar of simple (and often overmatched) decency in the Coens' spectacular Cormac McCarthy adaptation. This is lowkey Tommy Lee Jones' best performance of the last ten years, if not longer.
[Where to stream No Country for Old Men]
One of the Coens' best domineering old rich men, as fearsome and authoritative as anyone on the Coens' canvass.
[Where to stream Miller's Crossing]Photo: Everett Collection
Speaking of the Coens' domineering old rich men, Huddleston gives the performance of his career as the titular Lebowski. That "the bums lost!" speech is an all-timer.
[Where to stream The Big Lebowski]Photo: Everett Collection
It's too bad more people didn't get onboard with this movie, because McDormand does some of her best work as an unfaithful wife who pays way too much for it.
[Where to stream The Man Who Wasn't There]Photo: Everett Collection
The movie itself is divisive, but I can't imagine too many people were immune to Pitt's infectious energy as a brainless personal trainer looking to make some money via blackmail and spycraft.
[Where to stream Burn After Reading]Photo: Everett Collection
What starts off as a typical naggy girlfriend role ends up building to the most unexpected yet powerful scene, as she and Anton Chigurgh have a real toe-to-toe confrontation.
[Where to stream No Country for Old Men]Photo: Everett Collection
A terrifying boogeyman who won't let up and will hound you to your grave just because it's his job. Try to watch Walsh in anything else without thinking of this performance. And he works a LOT.
[Where to stream Blood Simple]Photo: Everett Collection
The Steve Buscemi performance that defined all other Steve Buscemi performances. The hair-trigger temper and the feeling that he's besieged on all sides by morons and the easily bendable morals. Iconic.
[Where to stream Fargo]Photo: Everett Collection
If for nothing else than every time he accused someone of giving him the high-hat. Also iconic.
[Where to stream Miller's Crossing]Photo: Everett Collection
Oh, you know, just play the actual devil. They don't always do it, but when the Coens decide to really challenge John Goodman with a juicy supporting role, he really delivers for them.
[Where to stream Barton Fink]Photo: Everett Collection
Can we start some sort of collection to get Holly Hunter cast in more Coen brothers' movies? She's so fantastic here, a perfect screen duo with Nicolas Cage, and she's the best comedic crier in the business.
[Where to stream Raising Arizona]Photo: Everett Collection
A Serious Man is not an easy movie, and Stuhlbarg has to do a lot of work to keep it moving forward while the Coens noodle their way through a story of fate and God and a cruel universe. It was a great showcase for an actor who had been underutilized.
[Where to stream A Serious Man]Photo: Everett Collection
Somehow, Goodman managed to best even that Barton Fink performance with his work as Walter Sobchak. A man who was equal parts philosopher and lunatic, bowler and agitator, Vietnam veteran and hater of anarchists. He is, as the Dude calls him ultimately, a fucking travesty, but he's also fundamentally good. For a role that's ostensibly comic relief, he's got layers.
[Where to stream The Big Lebowski]Photo: Everett Collection
Every time you watch Fargo, Jerry Lundergard just comes off worse and worse. Other characters are killers, thieves, bullies, and worse, but Jerry is amoral and also stupid, and his stupidity is what ends up getting people killed, and that's unforgivable. Macy gets to all of Jerry's rotten nooks and crannies.
[Where to stream Fargo]Photo: Everett Collection
Honestly, the perfect Nicolas Case performance, one which capitalizes on all his good AND bad qualities as an actor. The Coens make space for ham, and ham done well is an oft-forgotten Nic Cage gift.
[Where to stream Raising Arizona]Photo: Everett Collection
The fact that The Big Lebowski because such a cause celebre among your most basic stoner friends has led to a backlash that now has the movie being, if anything, underrated. We should give it the level of respect it deserves, though, if only because of what deceptively brilliant work Bridges is doing in the lead role. Every single line reading is a stone-cold winner.
[Where to stream The Big Lebowski]Photo: Everett Collection
A richly deserved Academy Award went to Bardem for playing this avatar of chaos, evil, and the inescapability of death. As frightening when he's speaking as when he's not.
[Where to stream No Country for Old Men]Photo: Everett Collection
Motormouthed and mile-a-minute, Jennifer Jason Leigh's Rosalind Russell homage is a sight to behold. It's as much a feat of physics as anything else that she's able to deliver the lines she delivers in the cadence she's carefully crafted. Where was her Pulitzer? Where was her Oscar nomination, for that matter?
[Where to stream The Hudsucker Proxy]Photo: Everett Collection
2015 was truly the year of the Oscar Isaac breakout, but by all rights it should have happened two years prior for his performance as this titular malcontented folk singer. While most Coens movies rely on the work of a strong ensemble, Isaac carries this movie pretty much on his own shoulders. He's honestly better than the material he's given, which is a rare thing to say about a Coens performance.
[Where to stream Inside Llewyn Davis]Photo: Everett Collection
The be-all and end-all. Not only the best performance in a Coens movie but one of the best performances of all time. Combining decency, intelligence, warmth, and the kind of befuddlement that can only walk hand-in-hand with an honest good-faith believe in humanity. That final scene with Peter Stormare in the cop car will never not be a stunner.
[Where to stream Fargo]Photo: Everett Collection
