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| Check out the Results pages to find out who you voted as the 100 greatest movie stars of all time. Click on any star's name to be taken to in-depth information about their work. |
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| 45- Bette Davis |
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Born in Massachusetts in 1908, Davis became "the first lady of the American screen" despite a difficult journey to the top. After failing numerous auditions and screen tests, Davis made her screen debut in 1931's The Bad Sister, thereafter starring in a number of Warner Brothers productions of dubious quality. Despite winning an Oscar in 1935 for Dangerous (she was nominated a record ten times) Warners kept giving her bum roles, and she tried unsuccessfully to break out of her contract. After winning another Oscar in 1938 for Jezebel, she seemed all washed up by 1962's Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?. But she triumphed again. She died in 1989 – her preferred epitaph was "She did it the hard way".
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| 44- Michael Caine |
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Maurice Micklewhite was born in 1933 in, of course, London. After serving in the Korean War, he got a job as an assistant stage manager at Horsham Repertory Company, and began playing small roles on stage and television. His film debut was 1956's A Hill In Korea, with his name change inspired by the 1954 Bogart movie, The Caine Mutiny. Since making his name in Zulu, The Ipcress File and Alfie, he has belied his talent with a slightly haphazard choice of roles (Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, anyone?). He is currently as successful as ever, partially as a result of British cinema's late-90s obsession with wily, loveable Cockneys.
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| 43- Jack Lemmon |
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orn John Uhler Lemmon III in Boston, 1925. After becoming involved in amateur dramatics at Harvard, Lemmon endured a slow rise to fame, not featuring in a film until 1954. However, the next year he gave an Oscar-winning performance in Mister Roberts. In a long, varied and extremely auspicious career he was best known for comedies, often working with actor Walter Matthau or director Billy Wilder. He agreed to appear in drag in Wilder's Some Like It Hot in return for the lead in the director's follow-up, the equally marvellous The Apartment. Before his death in June 2001 he made a brilliant comeback as a desperate, washed-up salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross.
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| 42- Gene Hackman |
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Eugene Hackman was born in California in 1930 and was a marine for six years. Menial jobs and a journalism degree followed before taking up acting at 30. Along with fellow student Dustin Hoffman he was voted the least likely to succeed by his classmates at the Pasadena Playhouse. After moving to New York he won a role in the Warren Beatty vehicle Lilith, and Beatty remembered him when casting for Bonnie And Clyde. Hackman was Oscar-nominated for his portrayal of Buck Barrow and, despite being sixth choice for the part, won the best actor Oscar for his role as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Has always been renowned for putting in good performances even when the films have fared less well.
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| 41- Jackie Chan |
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Jackie Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1954. Born into poverty – his parents almost sold him to the doctor who delivered him because they couldn't pay his medical bills – Chan was apprenticed to the Peking Opera at the age of six. He started out as a stuntman and after the death of Bruce Lee was groomed as a replacement. A Buster Keaton fan, Chan soon realised that he would be better off playing for laughs and was soon Asia's number one film star. Pretty much uninsurable having broken nearly all his bones performing his own stunts, Chan eventually broke through into Hollywood in the late 90s.
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