Oh! Sweet Nuthin': Best Final Performance of an Actor/Actress

There was a poll up for directors' final films recently--can't find one for performers. Thread title in honour of my favourite final song from a band (sort of...clarification not important here).

Idea inspired by Richard Burton, whose birthday it would have been yesterday. Two nominations: Burton in 1984 (he made a TV mini-series afterwards, but that doesn't count) and Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story. Should be a lead role, or an important supporting one like Burton's.

I think there's a lot of good ones. First to come to mind is Peter Finch in "Network".

I think that would overwhelmingly come to mind first.

Owen Hart

Clark Gable in The Misfits. It's been a couple of years since I saw it--I remember him being pretty good for most of the film, with one really hammy drunk scene.

Was also Monroe's last film, she is excellent in it as well.

Yes--forgot that the next one was never finished.

I like Lillian Gish in The Whales of August a lot.

I was going to say Divine in Hairspray, but imdb has his last role as something called Out of the Dark that I've never seen.

Actually there are a few of these where I was mistaken as to what the last performance was, Peter Sellers was apparently The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu rather than Being There (is it Being There he got a posthumous oscar nomination for?)

Yes. Even under the circumstances, I imagine Hoffman (the winner) was favored for Kramer vs. Kramer.

Ralph Richardson in Greystoke?

Carole Lombard in To Be or Not to Be

^seconded

Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, for which he won Best Actor Oscar. (Have any other actors won Best Actor for their last lead role?)

Was going to add Katharine Hepburn but wiki says she had one more lead role in Grace Quigley.

She also stuck around long enough to drop an F-bomb in Warren Beatty's An Affair to Remember remake.

Fonda in OGP < Spencer Tracy in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Sellers got no posthumous Oscar nominations, he died a few months after losing for Being There.

Fonda in that syrupy swill can't hold a candle to John Wayne in The Shootist either.

Can't think of many foreign actors cuz we don't like them much, right? Ingrid Bergman's was Autumn Sonata.

more from Hollywood:

http://www.classicfilmguide.com/index4ca4.html

Which reminds me: Victor Sjöström, Wild Strawberries

Feel like saying Roy Kinnear in The Three Musketeers... oh go on, I'll say it, not that i remember anything about the film or the performance tbh

Ingrid Bergman wasn't very good in Autumn Sonata tbh. Neither was Massimo Troisi in Il Postino.

(Have any other actors won Best Actor for their last lead role?)

ILX has been admirably avoiding the Heath-Ledger-shaped elephant in the room but someone must

James Stewart in an American tale: fievel goes west

al mulock

Can't think of many foreign actors cuz we don't like them much, right?

must you be a dick?

bruce lee, enter the dragon

While we're on the subject, how likely is Gandolfini to at least get a nomination for that new Holofcener film?

This would be my nomination:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXGH-Y_DvI8

^^^ good choice

Ingrid Bergman was in Golda, no?

ILX has been admirably avoiding the Heath-Ledger-shaped elephant in the room but someone must

Or else everyone knows his last film was The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and is rightly avoiding mentioning it.

was he in a starring role? ach fine

Golda was a TV miniseries.

Gandolfini has another film in the can.

Must you all be wrong?

well, yeah, but clem didn't distinguish film from teevee.

Burton in 1984 (he made a TV mini-series afterwards, but that doesn't count)

Must you all be wrong?

As wrong as disparaging people for not liking foreign actors when the first post is about Richard Burton?

where exactly do you think wales is

OK actors who acted in sumtin besides English, smart guy

Anna Magnani played herself in Fellini's Roma, but i don't remember that

Charles Laughton, Advise and Consent

Must you all be wrong?

Special case, but James Dean in Giant. A different kind of special case: Cagney, who hadn't made a film in 13 years, was the best reason to see Ragtime, as I recall. Still remember a great line of his: "That's a fine piece of thinkin', Willie."

Saw one of these recently but I can't recall - oh wait - left field vote for Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green.

Also, I love Bogart in The Harder They Come. That'd be up there with Burton and Farnsworth for me. Having a harder time thinking of actresses.

http://d1fgn7wex1bhjn.cloudfront.net/assets/tarantulaV2/embedded_images/1351845109_5_orson_welles.jpg

i think Welles' last onscreen appearance was in a Henry Jaglom film that came out 10 years after he died.

Was Dead Man Mitchum's last role?

Transformers the Movie was the last (voice) role for Scatman Crothers as well, according to imdb.

Dead Man was same year as 2 other barely released RM films.

Love-it-or-hate-it: Jason Robards in Magnolia.

Big Role, prominent film, would need to see it again: William Holden in S.O.B..

Haven't seen: Paul Newman in Road to Perdition (did some TV stuff, a documentary, and a couple of animated films afterwards).

Of course: John Cazale in The Deer Hunter.

Garbo missed by one film with Ninotchka--haven't seen the Cukor she finished with.

No love for William Hickey as the deceased patriarch in Mousehunt.

?

that Cukor-Garbo film is....fascinating.

Last Cukor film I saw was his salvage job of Justine which was actually pretty good, in its own way.

I was going to say Buster Keaton in Samuel Beckett's Film, but it seems his last film was this :

Keaton portrays the janitor at a newspaper who accidentally intercepts a call from the editor, ordering him to do a story about safety practices at a massive construction site. He sneaks onto the construction site and finds a list of 16 safety rules posted on a wall. He takes the list and attempts to confront workers when he sees them acting in an unsafe manner, often causing more accidents than he prevents. Keaton is silent throughout the film as he recreates several routines from his youth. Most notable was his recreation of a gag from his 1918 film The Bell Boy in which he mops the floor using only the tip of the mop, little by little while sitting on the floor.

which all seems a bit sad really.

You should never, ever look at the Twilight Zone episode he did.

In which through the magic of time travel he ends up in that past in a quota quickie silent film facing off against the man who sold the tribbles, or someone and something like that.

Wish Gene Hackman would've ended on The Royal Tennenbaums (three more, supposedly retired now)--that would've joined Wayne in The Shootist as the most perfect summation of a long career ever.

This thread got me wondering what Rodney Dangerfield's final film was, and imdb directed to this (am I the only person who wasn't familiar with it?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYuYmKpjfwQ

Also featuring Frank Gorshin playing George Burns.

Richard Harris in the first two Harry Potter movies

oddly enough i've realized james stewart's final role was also the first thing i ever saw him in: sheriff wylie burp in 1991's "an american tail 2: fievel goes west."

Watched Driveways (2019, so likely lost because of COVID), which I found in a thrift store. Had never heard of it, but Hong Chau, who I like so much in Homecoming, was the lead; also, Brian Dennehy's last film, released posthumously.

Quite good. Crosses the line from sentimentality into preciousness a couple of times towards the end, but Chau and Dennehy (and the kid, Lucas Jaye) are all excellent; Jerry Adler from The Sopranos also around. I should watch more films like this--independent, quiet, obscure. And not a name director; I'm constantly disappointed by work from name directors the past few years.

A different kind of special case: Cagney, who hadn't made a film in 13 years, was the best reason to see Ragtime, as I recall. Still remember a great line of his: "That's a fine piece of thinkin', Willie."

― clemenza, Monday, November 11, 2013 11:17 AM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are you intentionally overlooking the 1984 made-for-TV Terrible Joe Moran? Cagney fans would approve.

Never heard of it--I guess I did...

seems apt to bump this right before Ozzy died

He did voicework on three videos afterwards, but David Lynch in The Fablemans (no fan of the film) has to be up near the top of the list.

Speaking of which: Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky

Douglas Fairbanks in the title role of The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). He lived for another decade and almost certainly crops up in newsreels, but here he gives the passing-the-torch sort of performance that really satisfies.

What have you got against The Fablemans, clem?

Grace Kelly in High Society, obviously

(xpost) Didn't post more than once at the time--people generally loved it--but I found most of the film till Lynch arrived kind of cloying and aimlessly busy; as family films go, I think Roy Scheider playing copycat with his young boy in Jaws a hundred times more like genuine art. Lynch (the whole scene) was amazing; there was a key scene with the football player (?) I liked too.

Oh--where's the horizon!?