Every Hollywood icon who called James Cagney their favourite actor: “The greatest bar none”
It stands to reason that if enough people are in agreement on the same thing, there’s more than a hint of truth to it. With that in mind, based entirely on how many indelible Hollywood icons have called James Cagney either their favourite actor or the greatest of all time, maybe he is the pinnacle of the profession.
Whenever an actor is tasked to pick the best ever, the first name everyone expects to hear is Marlon Brando, and with good reason. After all, he made more of a noticeable impact on the craft than Cagney, and it’s hard to argue with Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, or John Goodman, all of whom have the legendary method man at the top of the pile.
However, despite struggling with typecasting after his initial breakthrough when films like The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, and The Roaring Twenties established him as the de facto face of the gangster flick, Cagney was simply too talented to let himself be stuffed into a one-genre box.
Illustrating that point, he won an Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ in a musical biopic after headlining 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy as George M Cohan, and ended the decade with what’s arguably the definitive performance of a remarkable career: White Heat‘s Cody Jarrett.
Even when he retired from the business in the early 1960s before returning for a one-off turn in 1981’s Ragtime, Cagney’s influence never wavered. If anything, it’s remarkable just how many Oscar-winning actors, awards-laden auteurs, innovative filmmakers, and cinematic superstars couldn’t see beyond him as the best of the best.
Stanley Kubrick was never one to fawn over actors, but he was incredulous that Steven Spielberg didn’t include Cagney in his personal list of the five all-time greatest. Few personalities in Tinseltown come more iconic than Clint Eastwood, and he called Cagney the star “that movies were invented for,” which is about the highest possible praise.
Malcolm McDowell branded him as “the greatest actor to ever grace the silver screen bar none,” John Travolta said he was “the only one outside my family who was a main source of inspiration,” Robert Redford praised Cagney as “an incredible talent,” Gene Hackman cited him as the single most important influence on his decision to pursue acting, and George C Scott called him a “holy human general.”
Those names alone have collected multiple Oscars and made many of cinema’s finest features on either side of the camera, and the common thread that unites them is that Cagney towers over everything as a definitive, undeniable, and inarguable master of the screen who they all believe deserves to be remembered as the cream of the crop, and accolades don’t get much loftier than that.
Even Orson Welles, who was more prone to savaging his colleagues and contemporaries than delivering hagiographic compliments to their gifts, was confident that Cagney was “the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of the camera.” When names of that calibre are in such vehement agreement, then perhaps Brando isn’t the be-all and end-all for thespianism after all.
Icons who called James Cagney their favourite actor:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Clint Eastwood
- Malcolm McDowell
- Robert Redford
- Gene Hackman
- John Travolta
- George C Scott
- Orson Welles
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