The most fascinating leading men in Hollywood history understand the value of disturbing the goodness of their charismatic reputation. Tyrone Power was a trusted romantic lead, but he played the smug murderer in Billy Wilder’s 1957 film Witness for the Prosecution. In 1959, bruised and bruising Burt Lancaster embraced the part of a sordid newspaper columnist in the pitch-black noir he produced, Sweet Smell of Success. In 1963, a tender Paul Newman strutted through Hud as a pompous son with a cutting smile and depthless gaze. Denzel Washington was gruesomely low down in the dirt as a cop willing to wield his privilege against vulnerable Black and brown communities in 2001’s admittedly loathsome Training Day. I am especially enamored with how Cary Grant brought a chill to his persona in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious and Suspicion — where all the charm and grace he’d displayed elsewhere came across simultaneously as crucial armor and a hidden weapon. These turns take not only an actor capable and willing to disrupt their own carefully crafted image but a script with vision and a director with ferocious style and who understands the stories a star’s body tells.
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