Researchers Have Determined Who the Best Actor of All Time Really Is

You cannot calculate a feeling or reaction to a film; it exists in a separate corner of the mind that lies far away from numbers and statistics. Cinema has always thrived in that murky territory between instinct and intellect.

We carry performances with us for reasons that rarely align with ticket sales or trophies, and sometimes the roles that change us most are the ones that barely registered on release. Attempting to compress that into a spreadsheet feels faintly absurd, even before the calculations begin.

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 honor 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 toward films like Naked or Irreversible? Can it truly understand our love for specific performers? 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. Finally, the results from each Academy Award season were factored in, making note of who topped the charts at the Oscars.

The final results revealed that three actors share this title, with Leonardo DiCaprio being the first. He is one of the highest-ranked among the online ratings, having starred in massive hits like Titanic, Inception, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Although the actor has famously only won one Oscar for Best Actor, the films he has been in have pulled in countless wins and nominations. The next actor to be given this award is Paul Newman. he starred in legendary movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, and The Verdict, as well as lending his voice to the Cars franchise.

The final actor to make it onto the list is Al Pacino. he has played some of the most iconic leading men of all time in the likes of The Godfather, Scarface, and Heat. Much like DiCaprio, the actor has only won one Academy Award for The Scent of Women in 1993, but his body of work is undeniably massive.

As of this year, these three legends are still very much part of the cultural conversation. Leonardo DiCaprio is currently coming off the success of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 epic One Battle After Another, which has been a major contender during the awards season.

He is also set to begin filming the highly anticipated Heat 2 in September, where he will star alongside Christian Bale in a story that serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the 1995 classic. Al Pacino is keeping equally busy at 85, having recently wrapped production on Lear Rex, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear directed by Bernard Rose.

The film features a star-studded cast including Jessica Chastain, Rachel Brosnahan, and Peter Dinklage, and is scheduled for release later this year. Paul Newman’s legacy continues to grow, with Disney and Pixar recently announcing the new series Cars: Lightning Racers for 2027, which will keep his iconic Doc Hudson character alive for a new generation.

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