64. Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson 
     The Hustler (1961)

Other actors with Newman’s considerable charm and good looks might have gone the matinee idol route, phoning in one pretty boy after another. Not Newman. In this gritty drama about a pool shark, he not only proved once again that he was willing to tackle a risky role, but—in making Fast Eddie, essentially a cocky perennial loser, so complex and likable—that he was also an exceptional actor. Piper Laurie, who worked with Newman on the 1957 romantic drama Until They Sail and here plays “Eddie’s girl,” as one character calls her, was in awe of her costar’s approach. “He was utterly truthful,” she says. “I just believed and trusted that he would come to me as Fast Eddie and not as Paul.”

Although Newman lost the Best Actor Oscar to Maximilian Schell (Judgment at Nuremberg ), he finally won a golden statue 25 years later for reprising his role as Fast Eddie in The Color of Money , Martin Scorsese’s sequel to The Hustler . A just reward? Absolutely. Did the Academy make a mistake in 1961? Perhaps. But what’s certain is that in the original, Newman sank the nine on the break, or in other words—Laurie’s, to be precise—gave “a hell of a performance.”

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