The greatest actor of all time, according to science

When it comes to the art of making movies, it doesn’t seem like something that pairs well with science.

You cannot quantify a feeling or reaction to a film; it exists in a separate corner of the mind that lies far away from numbers and statistics. When I think about merging them together, I think about Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poet Society as he rips up all those derivative pages in the poetry textbooks. However, a recent study attempted to discover the greatest actor of all time, compiling data from box office sales, Oscar recognition, and online ratings. So, who is it? 

In order to bestow this honour onto an actor, the creator of the study, Daniel Parris, needed to use a wide number of sources to fairly inform the results because the task of quantifying anything artistic brings up many questions: can science articulate the complexity of our feelings towards films like Naked or Irreversible? Can it truly understand our love for Kristen Stewart and Josh O’Connor? I would argue that this is impossible, but, scientists are an unruly bunch, and so I’ll step back as they explore the grey area that no human has stepped in before.  

The first category that was taken into consideration was the online ratings, presumably from platforms such as IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd. While we like to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that box office sales aren’t important, they unfortunately do have some bearing in the film industry, which was also taken into consideration. And finally, the results from each Academy Award season were factored in, making note of who topped the charts at the Oscars. But as we know, this isn’t always a reliable form of validation, with famously bad projects winning awards or recognition for something they didn’t do well, such as Bohemian Rhapsody winning ‘Best Editing’ or Green Book for ‘Best Picture’ (lest we forget). 

And so, the final results after stacking data from each of these sources revealed that there are three actors who share this title.

The first actor is Leonardo DiCaprio. He is one of the highest ranked among the online ratings, as well as starring in some of the most commercially successful films of recent times, such as Titanic, Inception and The Wolf of Wall Street. Although the actor has famously only won one Oscar for ‘Best Actor’, with more snubs than you’d think a Hollywood ego could handle, the films he has been in have pulled in countless wins and nominations. Thank you to the Academy, I mean ‘science’, for awarding him this honour.  

The next actor to be given this award is Paul Newman. I will admit that this one threw me a bit. I will also concede that I had to quickly google Paul Newman to remind myself of which films he’s been in—and I still don’t really understand it. So yes, he’s been in very successful movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and The Verdict, as well as lending his voice to the Cars franchise made by Pixar, but for the first time, I disagree with science. Maybe statistically, this is correct, but emotionally, I disagree.  

And the final actor to make it onto the list is Al Pacino. I can understand this one, as Pacino has played some of the most iconic leading men of all time in the likes of The Godfather, Scarface and Heat. In addition to DiCaprio, the actor has only won one Academy Award for Scent of a Woman in 1993.  

While men dominate the list, apparently, there were a few other actors that nearly made the cut, such as Emma Thompson, Robert Downey Jr, Meryl Streep and Marlon Brando.  

So there we have it, the greatest actors of all time (according to science).

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