Has there been anyone singled out as much as Daniel DayLewis

There is a lot of agenda-driven revisionism going on here. Robert De Niro was hardly a major star, and he is probably Brando's biggest challenger to the GOAT title. Al Pacino, while a bigger star than De Niro, was also not among the biggest stars of his generation. Dustin Hoffman was a much bigger star and has a better Oscar record than both De Niro and Pacino. But nobody would argue that he's a bigger GOAT contender than De Niro or Pacino.

The reason for that is that while he has iconic performances in iconic films, he still doesn't have something like The Godfather or The Godfather II on his resume, which are at the forefront of all discussions of the greatest films ever made. Your popularity in your own day matters less than whether the movies you were in have lasting power. Only film geeks seek out movies without a great reputation just for performances alone. For an actor to remain in the public consciousness, they need to have been in movies that people will want to watch decades from now. And those movies will serve as the entry point to the rest of the actors work. Marlon Brando has The Godfather, On the Waterfront, and Apocalypse Now to serve as an entry point to the rest of his work. Robert De Niro has Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and The Godfather II. Al Pacino has The Godfather and The Godfather II. It's hard as a post-1970s actor to compete with that.

Does Daniel Day-Lewis have a movie like that on his resume? Most likely not, though it's conceivable that There Will Be Blood could eventually earn a similar reputation. Even if it does, is it going to be enough? No, because it's just one movie and it will never be The Godfather. But that doesn't stop him from being considered the greatest actor of his generation, with his own generational rivals like Washington (who called him the best actor working) and Penn (who called him possibly the GOAT) anointing him as such.

My point is that he wasn't as popular or as well-known as Dustin Hoffman, in the 1970s or the 1980s.

Of course he endured, but it's because he delivered iconic performances in movies that had real lasting power. Not because he was a popular star. Even someone like Redford was way more popular than De Niro.

This is irrelevant and has nothing to do with anything I'm saying. Dustin Hoffman was a bigger star and more popular than De Niro in the 1970s and the 1980s. This isn't even debatable. Moving on.

Nope. He was never a major star. In terms of stardom and popularity, he was kind of like what Christian Bale is these days. He is, however, a major legend, and that has quite a bit to do with the movies he was in.

Absolutely, and I said as much in my earlier post: "The reason for that is that while he has iconic performances in iconic films, he still doesn't have something like The Godfather or The Godfather II on his resume, which are at the forefront of all discussions of the greatest films ever made."

Hoffman has also got Midnight Cowboy, All the President's Men, Kramer vs Kramer, and Tootsie. All I'm saying is that they're not as well-regarded as The Godfather or Taxi Driver.

DeNiro was enough of an international household name by 1984, that major pop bands in the UK were naming hit pop songs after him:




You don't have to be the biggest box office star to have the crowd. There are dozens of bigger box office stars than many of the top GOAT contenders. Nobody is putting Tom Cruise or Will Smith at the forefront of GOAT debates. But the cultural impact  and cache of  DeNiro even by the early to mid 80's when he was still a relatively young actor was massive. Average people on the street talked about him and imitated him. He was beloved. He had the crowd. Comparing that to DDL's modest cultural cache doesn't make much sense to me. 

Pop songs is a weird cherry-picked metric, but it's not like Day-Lewis hasn't been mentioned in songs. Triple One, a Hip Hop group from Australia, came out with a song just this year where Day-Lewis is mentioned alongside Brando. Not sure what this is supposed to prove, but there you go.

Also, nobody said Day-Lewis has the cultural appeal of De Niro. He doesn't, because he hasn't been in all-timer movies like The Godfather II or Taxi Driver. That's kind of the point.

Triple One, a Hip Hop group from Australia. You know, the group that mentioned this guy called Daniel Day-Lewis, who Denzel Washington has acknowledged as the best actor of their generation.

Even though I explicitly compared him to Hoffman in my post?

De Niro was being considered the better actor and perhaps the bigger legend of the two, but Hoffman was still the bigger star and the more popular actor into the 1990s. It's not for nothing that Hoffman was billed over De Niro in Wag the Dog. It wasn't until Analyze This and especially Meet the Parents that De Niro surpassed Hoffman to become the bigger star.


I mean by them what they actually mean. That people want to pay money to watch you in movies. But perhaps you've living under too many John Malkovich rocks to know that 

Why does the popularity of the group matter? We're not talking about which gets your name out more. We're talking about the actors being popular enough to be mentioned in songs in the first place. I could easily spin this the other way around and say that even small groups in Australia are namechecking Day-Lewis as an acting great alongside Brando. 

Oh, and if we're talking about numbers, let's also not compare someone like Denzel Washington who can barely gross more than $200M without help from bigger stars like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts to someone like Leonardo DiCaprio who has grossed over $2000M with an original movie.

One thing is not like the other

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