There are plenty of things we go to the movies for: spectacle, an escape from our workaday lives, a portal into a different world, a laugh, an artistic epiphany. And then there are the people. Not the people we go to the movies with, or the people in the theater for that matter. (Hey, you in the next row—knock it off with the cell phone.) The people in the movies, conjured by an actor speaking a writer’s words, guided by a director, locked onto celluloid by a cinematographer, projected onto the screen by a beam of light. So many degrees of contrivance—but sometimes we believe in these people as much as we believe in . . . well, actually, more than we believe in that joker who’s still on her cell. For this list, we’ve shunned biopics, which begin with a filmmaker’s mission to do justice to reality. Here we’re giving priority to people who never were—but who are always with us movie lovers.

Written by Kelly Borgeson, Sara Brady, Rachel Clarke, Chris Cronis, Susannah Gora, Brooke Hauser, Kathy Heintzelman, Glenn Kenny, Jessica Letkemann, Cristy Lytal, Jason Matloff, Tom Roston, David Schlow, Fred Schruers, Christine Spines, Tim Swanson, and Al Weisel.

100 - 91 | 90 - 81 | 80 -71 | 70 - 61 | 60 - 51 | 50 - 41 | 40 - 31 | 30 - 21 | 20 -11 | 10 - 1

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