Posted on 03/24/2011 9:09:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Out of more than half a million films made by Hollywood the character portrayed by Tom Hanks ranked top in the biggest ever poll of moviegoers.
The 1994 film was a box office hit and critically acclaimed with Hanks performance earning him the Oscar for Best Actor.
Audiences adored Gump as they followed his life from a child to adulthood as he took part in many of the pivotal events of the 1960s and 1970s.
The film, which took more than £500m at the box office, was based on the 1986 novel written by American author Winston Groom.
The film was also known for many of Gumps phrases, such as My momma always said, Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what youre gonna get.
While Gump was the runaway winner, British secret agent James Bond was named as the second greatest film character.
007 has endured for almost 50 years after being created by author Ian Fleming.
Daniel Craig is the latest film Bond following in the footsteps of Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.
Scarlett OHara was rated as the third most memorable character.
The performance by British star Vivien Leigh as the feisty southern belle in the epic Gone with the Wind made her the only female character in the top five.
Anthony Hopkins performance as Hannibal Lecter helped the cannibalistic serial killer rate fourth in the poll.
Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, was named as the fifth most popular character.
More than 500,000 people took part in the survey carried out by ABC TV and People magazine.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Or Tommy Lee Jone’s character.
Just because Dennis Hopper deserves some mention.
You must be about 80. Not to be rude but those are seriously old movies. I have not viewed one of them. I saw a part or two of Gone with the Wind but how boring was that movie. The sets are so fake.
Space Balls is another favorite... I know just about all the lines by now. Fond memories of sitting in front of the tv with my son who knew all the lines as well, and rolling on the floor laughing together. Now how many movies can recall those kinds of memories! Certainly not Forrest Gump.
Another Mel Brooks, Young Frankenstein, Marty Feldman “Hump? What hump?” the lines are a scream!
Great choice! I have Ben Hur at a close second to Doctor Zhivago.
My top 5 movie characters:
Dirty Harry
James Bond
Matthew Quigley
Indiana Jones
Rambo
Greatest cameo appearance, ever.
Dr Zhivago is also my favorite, I can’t decide who was the better character, Zhivago or Pasha (Strelnikov).
Look at it this way sonny, I saw those movies and those since and stand by my selections about characters. BTW, Gekko was a character from two movies, one from 85 and one from 2010, so you must be a todler to consider them all old.
Ralph Kramden is in the same vein, and unimaginably good at it.
I also enjoyed Columbo...
And then there was John Madden, being himself...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034167/
Alvin C. York had been approached by producer Jesse Lasky several times, beginning in 1919, to allow a movie to be made of his life, but had refused, believing that “This uniform ain’t for sale.” Lasky convinced York that, with war threatening in Europe, it was his patriotic duty to allow the film to proceed. York finally agreed - but only on three conditions. First, York’s share of the profits would be contributed to a Bible School York wanted constructed. Second, no cigarette smoking actress could be chosen to play his wife. Third, that only Gary Cooper, could recreate his life on screen. Cooper at first turned down the role, but when York himself contacted the star with a personal plea, Cooper agreed to do the picture.
Alvin: Well I’m as much agin’ killin’ as ever, sir. But it was this way, Colonel. When I started out, I felt just like you said, but when I hear them machine guns a-goin’, and all them fellas are droppin’ around me... I figured them guns was killin’ hundreds, maybe thousands, and there weren’t nothin’ anybody could do, but to stop them guns. And that’s what I done.
Maj. Buxton: Do you mean to tell me that you did it to save lives?
Alvin: Yes sir, that was why.
Maj. Buxton: [amazed] Well, York, what you’ve just told me is the most extraordinary thing of all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyF9KKUeds8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68TdgErXkE
"Igor, help me with the bags."
"Soitenly. You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the turban."
I hate that stupid movie. I would rather stick nails in my eyes than listen to that stupid Tom Hanks act like a retard.
He vould have an enormous schwanzstucker.
That goes w/o saying.
He’s going to be very popular.
Watched the Patriot last night with my 14 year old daughter....that is an exceptional movie!
My favorite character in Zhivago is by far Gen. Yevgraf (the narrator, Alec Guiness). You can hear in his inflections that he, looking back, was not all that enamored with the methods and brutal outcomes of Communism.
He was on fire, at first, like Pasha Antipov (Strelnikov), who flipped out and wanted mommy when it all came crashing down around him.
Then, reality set in for Yevgraf. He seems to have valued Russian-ism much more highly than Soviet-ism in the end. In that sense, he was a patriot, which is admirable. And he seemed to value family and individual artistic achievement more than the sterile collectivism in the end; and in that sense, he was not only a patriot but a downright civilized one. And he was telling the story because it needed to be told, for all the right reasons.
One thing I love about this film, aside from the fact that David Lean shows himself to have been Rembrandt with a 70mm camera, is the fact that for every situation I see on the world scene today, I can quote you a cogent line from the movie.
I’m glad to know there are at least two other Zhivago devotees on here (beaversmom is another).
In my opinion the movie The Exorcist laid the ground work for the TV character Columbo. Having read the book first, I thought Lee J. Cobb was miscast as the bumbling detective in the movie. He didn't bumble at all but instead played it straight.
Later, the TV series Columbo came out and Peter Faulk perfectly played the character outlined as the detective in the book.
Archie of course mostly played it for laughs, but there was one scene in All In the Family, where you realized that Carol O'Connor was one hell of an actor, it was the Christmas episode with the draft dodger, one of the most powerful scenes in television history IMHO. You can just feel the anger pouring out of him.
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