r/flicks • u/culebrero Oscar Expert • 7d ago
Question What is the greatest one scene performance in cinema history that completely stole the movie?
I am talking about an actor who gets less than 5 or 10 minutes of total screen time, has zero setup, walks into a movie, absolutely electrifies the room, and leaves every single main A list actor standing in their shadow.When the credits roll, you aren't even thinking about the main plot anymore you're just thinking about those few minutes.The gold standard for me is Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. He shows up for exactly one scene, delivers the brutal, iconic seven minute Always Be Closing monologue to a room full of legendary actors, and walks out. He isn't seen for the rest of the film, yet his scene completely defines the entire legacy of that movie.Another wild one is Ned Beatty in Network. He gets one sequence at the boardroom table to deliver a terrifying speech about the corporate world, entirely shifting the tone of the film, and walks away with an Oscar nomination for it.Who is that one actor for you? To keep the mods happy and follow the sub rules, don't just name-drop the movie give me the exact breakdown of the scene, why it worked so well, and how it completely outclassed the rest of the script.
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u/angus-327 7d ago
Barbara Billingsly in Airplane talking jive to the two sick passengers
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u/Soggy-Caterpillar615 7d ago
Christopher Walken / Dennis Hopper sicilian scene in True Romance.
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u/Hillnot 7d ago
Add Gary Oldman. This movie is full of fantastic roles that feature in only one or two scenes.
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u/daleksattacking 7d ago
Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights
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u/AgentLee0023 7d ago
That guy is a chameleon. I never realized he was in Boogie Nights or Raiders Of The Lost Ark
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u/pompous_hallway 7d ago
Viola Davis in Doubt. She's in one scene, maybe eight minutes, opposite Meryl Streep at her absolute peak, and she doesn't just hold her own she re-centers the entire moral universe of the film. That closeup where a single tear rolls down her nose right as she confesses she'd do anything to keep her son safe... it reframes every argument you just watched for the previous hour and a half. Got an Oscar nom for basically a single conversation.
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u/Few-Marzipan5256 7d ago
This is the answer and it’s not close. Honorable mention for Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea.
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u/Shelby71 7d ago
Came here to say this as well. The four leads in that movie were all incredible, but Davis's scene was the heart of that movie.
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u/CatFit4498 7d ago
Jesse Plemons in Civil War.
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u/SerDire 7d ago
“What kind of American are you?”
How scarily prophetic has this become in this day and age
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u/kabobkebabkabob 6d ago
Bruh that movie is from two years ago lmao these are not new developments since that movie came out
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u/Ok-Clock7159 7d ago
He made that whole movie, stole the show 1000 times over, and he was a last minute fill-in. And te fact that he's husband of the lead makes his casting sound even more like a haphazard afterthought.
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u/TheGreatRao 7d ago
Baldwin gives an acting class to a room full of legends. Always Be Closing, gentlemen.
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u/jskisrq 7d ago
Ever notice how Blake (Alec Baldwin’s character) addresses each guy in the room differently? Dave Moss, it’s all about money…”see this watch…I made $X amount, how much you make?” etc. With Shelly, it’s his manhood. And he ignores Alan Arkin’s character entirely, other than saying to the back of his head “…you don’t like it, leave”. It’s show why he such a good salesperson. He walked in the room and read each man in a second. And the scene would not have worked if Ricky Roma was in the room.
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u/_dodged 7d ago
First thing that came to my mind. "Coffee is for closers!"
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u/reddog323 6d ago
That monologue single-handedly talked me out of a career in sales. I knew it wasn’t for me after that.
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u/UpperHesse 7d ago
He drives all the way through the rain just to school these veteran actors.
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u/DocCEN007 7d ago
Is this all of them? I'm gonna go.
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u/enraged_hbo_max_user 7d ago
Good thing Ricky Roma wasn’t there, because he would have told Alec Baldwin to go fuck himself
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u/Ok-Gur-349 7d ago
Lakeith Stanfield in Get Out makes the movie and if you actually go back and check I swear he's only on screen for maybe three or four minutes total.
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u/PickaxeJunky 7d ago
This is a great shout.
This questions gets asked fairly often, but I've never seen him thrown in the mix before.
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u/margin-bender 7d ago
Jeremy Irons in Margin Call.
I don't know how much screen time he got but wasn't much.
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u/ThatMovieShow 7d ago
He gets one scene and absolutely nails every aspect of that chatacter, who is clearly dick fuld.
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u/smonster1 7d ago
He’s in a few scenes, like the conversation with Kevin Spacey’s character where he recounts other historical market collapses and convinces him to work with him to unload all of the “steaming pile of excrement”. The board room scene (“explain it to me like you would a golden retriever”) is the standout scene though of course.
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u/ScottyinLA 7d ago
Fuld at Lehman was the idiot who saw his bank go under because he held on to toxic mortgages too long and then waved off a S Korean bank willing to absorb his bad paper because he thought he could get a better deal (he didn't).
Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs is the irl bank CEO who saw the crisis coming and managed to save his bank by selling off enough toxic products to clear his books (to willing buyers at market price) and afterwards argued this was legal because his bank had no fiduciary obligation to tell those buyers they no longer believed the MBS products were a sound investment.
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u/ChiGrandeOso 7d ago
Actually, it's even worse, in re: Fuld:
He expected Henry Paulson to come through on a bailout because "he likes us."
If you know ANYTHING about Hank Paulson, you know there was about as much chance of that happening as there was of Paulson cutting a disco album. He very famously was not only one cutthroat MF'r (which is how he got to be both solo head of Goldman Sachs after completely cutting out Jon Corzine and Treasury Secretary later on) but he hated Lehman Brothers and absolutely LOATHED Dick Fuld. One wonders what Fuld was seeing.
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u/Warm-Candle-5640 7d ago
Some great choices already.
Mine—while it's not just one scene, Orson Welles in The Third Man is, to my mind, the GOAT for this. The cuckoo clock scene on the Ferris Wheel is a total mic drop.
Also, recognition to Anthony Hopkins for Silence of the Lambs. Oscar win for being on screen for only 16 minutes.
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u/pumpse4ever 7d ago
Nothing tops Beatty in Network, so you already know the answer.
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u/ManceRaider 7d ago
It’s funny bc my go-to answer for this is Beatrice Straight for the same movie, if only bc she took home an oscar for literally one scene
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u/Salt-Adeptness2668 7d ago edited 7d ago
Donald Sutherland, JFK. One sequence (I think), meeting the main character in the park and essentially narrates an info dump, but makes it absolutely compelling
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u/Dazzling_Look_1729 7d ago
Agree. He is the most memorable thing in an otherwise chaotic movie.
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u/AnotherPint 7d ago
Anthony Hopkins appears in only a small fraction of Silence of the Lambs, maybe ten minutes out of two-plus hours, but his performance is most of what people remember about the movie.
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u/Grouchy_Sound167 7d ago
Absolutely.
I'd add Brian Cox as the same character in Manhunter. Maybe 10 minutes of scene work, but those 10 minutes are a master class.
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u/Last_Department5610 7d ago
Stephen Dillane in The Hours when he realizes that he’s never going to be able to save his mentally ill wife from self-destruction. He is so completely real and understated, complete despair, absolutely electrifying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance like it.
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u/merlin401 7d ago
Doesn’t quite fit the category. 16 minutes and he won best actor (but his impact/screen time metric is indeed off the charts)
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u/Life_Temperature2506 7d ago
Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction.
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u/siryoda66 7d ago
Matthew McConaughey as senior trader Mark Hanna in Wolf of Wall Street. Really just one scene where he takes Leo Dicaprio's character out to lunch (technically he is introduced 1 or 2 scenes earlier for about 2 minutes).
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u/SloppityNurglePox 7d ago edited 7d ago
Peter Stormare had probably 5-8 minutes in a 2hr movie. He steals that movie and is easily one of the best devils in film.
Edit, bad form and didn't drop the title: Constantine. Tilda Swinton also rocks in it, but when doesn't she.
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u/Shaydu 7d ago
Had to ctrl-F to see if anybody else had said this one before I nominated it. To me, this few-minutes-long performance sets the gold standard for performing Satan. And then he gets to play off of Tilda Swinton, playing the Angel Gabriel:
Gabriel: "Son of perdition. Little horn! Most unclean!"
Satan: [nostalgic] "I do miss the old names."
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u/GradeFair 7d ago
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u/scarymoose 6d ago
off-topic, but have you seen Fail-Safe? It's a serious spin on the same premise. Absolutely amazing.
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u/jamesvabrams 7d ago
If we were flying any lower we'd have to put sleigh bells on but ain't no Russki radar picking us up.
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u/3fettknight3 7d ago
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u/beaterdit 7d ago
Dennis Hopper in True Romance is up there. He has like two scenes in the movie. Christopher Walken’s performance opposite doesn’t hurt. Great writer (Tarantino), great cast, great movie IMO.
Gary Oldman in that movie is also a contender.
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u/vidman33 6d ago
I'd like to add Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction fits the criteria perfectly.
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u/Heavy-Pool5886 6d ago
Jeremy Irons' performance in Margin Call is the very definition of this. He enters an emergency staff meeting about halfway through the movie, takes the movie over, then disappears until the end where he briefly reappears to deliver a memorable soliloquy.
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u/SquashSouffle 7d ago edited 7d ago
This guy in Mulholland Drive.
Edit: just saw the rule about giving context. What's known as "The Diner scene" from Mulholland Drive is a Master class in suspense building, & this guy is the stand-in for the audience as his terror builds. And no part of the "main plot" involves him except in a super Meta- way.
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u/2BFaaaaaair 6d ago
Put some respect on Patrick Fischler’s name!
He also put on a clinic in season 2 of Mad Men. The scene where he tells Don he knows exactly who he is and what he’s done ::chef’s kiss::
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u/busybody124 7d ago
Patrick Fischler! He's been in a bunch of stuff, including Twin Peaks The Return, though that's also a very small appearance.
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u/bdybwyi 7d ago
Beatrice Straight in Network
Or wait actually Ned Beatty in Network
I can’t decide, which is why it’s the greatest script ever written
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u/SensitiveArtist 7d ago
John Turturro in The Big Lebowski
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u/maxplanar 7d ago
In a movie absolutely jam-packed with memorable dialogue, performances and scenes, "Nobody fucks with the Jesus" in a pink pantsuit is all time greatness.
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u/swiminthezen 7d ago
A lot of people don't seem to understand what the term "scene" means.
I've always been a fan of both the Harvey Keitel "wolf" scene and thr Christopher Walken "watch" scene from Pulp Fiction.
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u/TheMightyKumquat 7d ago edited 5d ago
Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride, as Miracle Max, the king's physician. Or at least, the king's personal physician "until the king's stinking son fired me."
One scene, 5 minutes, took 2 days to shoot, and Billy Crystal ad libbed all his lines.
Famously, for 2 days, the set was progressively emptied of crew. People had to leave because they kept bursting into laughter and ruining takes. An early casualty was Rob Reiner, the director. Within the first hour, he had to have a monitor set up for him in another room.
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u/merlin401 7d ago
This doesn’t entirely qualify because the rest of the movie is also amazing so it doesn’t outshine everything but an actor just dropping in for a amazing sequence will always make me thjnk Christopher Walken and the Gold Watch
TV version, Carmela Sopranos old Jewish psychiatrist dropped in to deliver perhaps the moral mission statement of the entire series in that long speech to her (one thing you can never say, is that you hadn’t been told…). But again, the series around it is spectacular so doesn’t fully fit
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u/albericosanna 7d ago
" One thing you can never say... that you haven't been told" such a killer line and actually a massive turning point in the series.
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u/incog46 7d ago
Wilford Brimley in Absence of Malice. Stealing a picture from Paul Newman is not easy.
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u/dirkalict 7d ago edited 7d ago
“Last time there was a leak like this Noah built a boat.”- I think that was the first time I noticed Wilford Brimley. After that, I looked for him in movies. Bob Balaban was great in that scene too- of course so was Newman.
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u/incog46 7d ago
You're a pretty smart fella. My advice to you is, don't be too smart. Pretty smart myself.
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u/Previous_Ambition_43 7d ago
Even though he is in more than one scene, only one of those has dialogue: Orson Welles in The Third Man. He steals the movie so completely people often think he wrote and/or directed and/or starred in it. He stole every bit of the movie.
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u/Familiar_Employee_43 7d ago
Princess Bride had quite a few great scenes, but Billy Chrystal is the most noteworty. Had to top that genius
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u/Dependent_Age_6886 7d ago
Edie McClurg as the Marathon Car Rental lady, Planes Trains & Automobiles.
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u/ArfyLewis 7d ago
Edie McClurg as the school secretary in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “Ferris is a righteous dude.”
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u/AdvancedNature4597 7d ago
Matt Damon signing “Scotty Doesn’t Know” in Eurotrip.
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u/ChakaKhansBabyDaddy 7d ago
Bronson Pinchot as Serge in Beverly Hills Cop- this is the correct answer
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u/Jack_Q_Frost_Jr 7d ago
This is a very good answer. Especially when considering the degree of difficulty - stealing a scene and getting some of the biggest laughs in a movie starring Eddie Murphy in his absolute prime.
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u/ChakaKhansBabyDaddy 7d ago
If you watch the scene closely you can see Eddie struggling not to laugh
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u/Emotional_Dealer8905 7d ago
I heard that Pinchot pulled that accent out of his ass and no one knew it was coming until the cameras rolled.
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u/Pessemist_Prime 7d ago
Get the fuck outta here!!!
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u/ChakaKhansBabyDaddy 7d ago
No, I cannot! It's serious! Because it's very important piece.
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u/Axerated1986 7d ago
For me, I am always blown away by Michael Parks portrayal of a sleazy pimp in Kill Bill volume 2. When Uma Thurman is talking to him, he has so much going on with his eyes and his face, whilst delivering lines in such an unconventional way. Honorable mention to Hugo Weaving in Hacksaw Ridge, that dinner table scene is captivating
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u/Journeys_End71 6d ago
Jack Nicholson was only in like 2 scenes in A Few Good Men but everyone remembers the movie because of those scenes.
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u/iHaveAnEyeForDetails 7d ago
Bryan Cranston in that Godzilla movie that they tricked us with the advertising.. I only saw the movie because I thought he'd be featured; instead he dies within 15 minutes. The only thing I even remember from that movie was this scene of Cranston pleading something before they take him away, and the performance was bone-chilling
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u/out-to-eat5656 7d ago
Not the greatest in cinema history but I love the guy who sells Travis Bickle the guns in Taxi Driver. I think it’s screen writer Paul Schrader.( not sure though)
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u/suzypulledapistol 7d ago
That's Steven Prince, a raconteur of sorts. One of his stories became the famous injection scene in Pulp Fiction.
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u/1805trafalgar 7d ago
He quips "Isn't that a little honey"? when Bickel looks at one gun, but the dialogue as delivered sounds like "Inadaliddlehoney?"
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u/scotandrsn 7d ago
My answer to this is always Nancy Mette as Nina in Passion Fish.
The movie is about a prominent actress whose career is cut short after she becomes wheelchair-bound.
There's ONE scene where she gathers with her actress friends, and they share stories of their careers. Nina, one of the other actresses, has this monologue. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the movie, and it's the only scene she's in.
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u/gorgargotyou 7d ago
Donnie Wahlberg in The Sixth Sense has to be right up there.
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u/SladeW1776 7d ago
Gary Oldman in True Romance
https://giphy.com/gifs/9ZSvXf6w9OWBy
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u/inviolatelight 6d ago
Dennis Hopper (and Christopher Walken) in True Romance.
Epic scene.
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u/TheBig_W 7d ago
I think the classic answer is probably Brando in Apocalypse Now. Also, for double points, I think Duvall as Boo Radley is one of the best brief, non-speaking appearances ever. He says so much with just a few lingering looks.
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u/BitterCharacter8628 7d ago
Donnie Walhberg as Vincent Grey in The Sixth Sense. He literally lost 43 pounds to play less than 3 minutes onscreen and set up the whole movie 👏🏻
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u/Jpmoz999 7d ago
Judi Dench.
Shakespeare in Love. Changes the air in the movie utterly.
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u/Mickthebrain 7d ago
Bobby Anderson as young George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). The scene where he confronts Mr. Gower, the grieving, drunken pharmacist, after realizing he's accidentally put poison in a prescription.
It’s power hits year after year after of watching. I always tell whoever is in the room with me it is my favorite acting scene I’ve ever watched in cinema. The old man, the young boy, each fully engaged in listening and reacting to each other. It floors me.
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u/Amrywiol 7d ago
Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love. She so dominated that she got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for barely five minutes of screentime.
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u/Glass-Nectarine-3282 7d ago
Just to be contrary, I feel like that's a scene that got the award but did not deserve the notice. She has the one moment where she's like "too late" when she walks in the water, but it's not that special. It's what you'd expect from Judi Densch playing a queen.
Of course she is great, don't get me wrong - but IMO it didn't steal the movie.
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u/ELMangosto16 7d ago
Just to be contrary to you then, I'd argue you can't hold someone's innate ability against them. Just because Usain Bolt is expected to be faster than everyone else doesn't mean it wasn't amazing to watch
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u/Genghis_Khan68 7d ago edited 7d ago
Judi Dench spent most of the latter half of her career playing Judi Dench. M, Queen Elizabeth 1, Queen Victoria.. tough, slightly irritable alpha female but always with a little wry smirk or unexpected kind word to show she has a heart underneath the rhinoceros hide.
She should have done more like Notes on a Scandal, where she does a brilliant job of sly malevolence.
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u/tinpants44 7d ago
Rutger Hauer - Tears in the Rain - Blade Runner. He's in more of the film but that scene is timeless.
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u/TeamOfPups 7d ago
Hugh Grant's cameo at the end of Paddington 3 outclassed the whole movie. He brought everything that was great about the flawless Paddington 2.
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u/Relative-Train-6485 7d ago
Not quite because the rest of the movie is great also, but in her first feature-length film, Go (1999), Melissa McCarthy EATS her scene
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u/No_Leave8693 7d ago
Philip Seymour Hoffman did that in pretty much any movie he wasn’t the lead in. Along Came Polly is a so-so movie but his parts stole the show.
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u/jpcardier 5d ago
He is awesome in Almost Famous. I love the film and everybody in it, but PSH has an amazing minutes to impact ratio.
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u/1805trafalgar 7d ago
the grieving Mrs.Kintner in Jaws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQIUja-qkNY
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u/Icy-Panda-2158 6d ago
I hate that Alec Baldwin scene. It's a well-delivered monologue, yes, but it's also grating to me on multiple levels:
- It's just padding added to make the plot of a two-act play feel like a feature film. Nothing that happens afterwards is affected by it, and what it tells us about the rest of the characters we already know.
- It makes no sense in the context of the broader film. Why are Mitch and Murray sending Alec Baldwin to motivate sales people who have shitty leads like Levene's in the first place? You can't squeeze blood from a stone. Alec Baldwin, no matter how charming, would also not be able to motivate someone with no money to buy real estate. (In fact, why do they even employ these guys in the first place if they're just going to give them shitty sales leads that go nowhere? But that's a problem with the whole thing, not just that scene).
- The monologue is too tightly wound. The rest of the writing is very naturalistic, it feels like conversations real people might have with each other. And there's this bit where everyone sits quietly and lets one guy do his very scripted shpiel. No one does this in real life, especially not good salespeople. Mamet's a good writer but his head was too far up his own ass with this one.
Anyway, my answer is Gene Hackman in Bonnie and Clyde.
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u/KithKathPaddyWath 7d ago
Wild at Heart is amazing all around, but Sherilyn Fenn makes her one scene incredibly upsetting and heartbreaking.
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u/KithKathPaddyWath 7d ago
Some others I thought of:
I feel like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross is kind of an obvious answer here. The whole movie is good, but it never quite recaptures the energy Baldwin brings to it.
Samantha Morton had a one-two punch in 2022 with incredible single scene performances in both The Whale and She Said. Her performance is easily on par with Fraser in the former, and her performance in the latter is the best performance in the movie.
I know a lot of people hate the ending of Atonement, but I think Vanessa Redgrave's performance really grounds it.
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u/DunnyRamsay 7d ago
Willem Dafoe had a few scenes and so it doesn’t quite fit but the hotel room scene with Laura Dern is outstanding.
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u/OnslaughtRM 7d ago
You nailed two of the greatest of all time already! I have a few others, but they dont nearly stack up to those.
Tom Cruise as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. In a movie full of great comedic actors, he steals the show with 3 minor scenes.
Sigourney Weaver in The Cabin in The Woods. Appears just at the end with a full explanation for what the hell is happenjng and does a great job at being intimidating and manipulative while still being honest. Maybe it stands out more because its the final scene, but it does stand out.
Also a couple from Tarantino:
Harvey Keitel as the Wolf in Pulp Fiction. Only wouldn't count it because he's surrounded by amazing talent, and he doesn't overwhelm any others, but at least stands with them.
Hans Landa from Inglorious Bastards. While you could argue he is the main antagonist, he gets very litte screen time and absolutely steals the show.
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u/ballsoharder 7d ago
Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder gets my vote as well! And as a huge Tarantino fan, I’ll throw in another one from Pulp Fiction: Christopher Walken. That scene is so insane and I think about his completely serious delivery of lines like “I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years” all the time!
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u/Sao_Gage 7d ago
“Okay ‘Flaming Dragon’, fuckface, … why don’t you take a step back and LITERALLY FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!!!”
Yup. Tom Cruise stole Tropic Thunder. The very first time I saw that film, uncomfortably in theaters with my parents, this scene produced more of a convulsion of laughter than eruption.
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u/ProfessorrFate 7d ago
Jo Van Fleet’s one and only scene as Luke’s mother Arletta in “Cool Hand Luke.” It’s an absolute masterpiece: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ISct39VObX4&ra=m
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u/Brackens_World 7d ago
That's an easy one for me: Diahnne Abbott in Scorsese's New York, New York (1977). The movie is mostly ponderous and overacted and fake, taking place in the 1940s and 1950s, but suddenly Abbott gets up on stage at a Harlem nightclub as a sort of Lena Horne/Billie Holdiay singer and does "Honeysuckle Rose". And suddenly, the movie wakes up and lives for a few minutes.
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u/sacreque 6d ago edited 5d ago
Gene Hackman as the Blind Hermit in Young Frankenstein.
It's a perfect pastiche of the original Bride of Frankenstein scene. Hackman is the perfect straight man foil to Peter Boyle's Monster, subjecting the poor creature to all sorts of torture while meaning so well. The comedy is amplified because the dramatic actor Hackman is delivering it. The capper is the final line: "I was gonna make 'spresso!"
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u/seven1trey 7d ago
Brad Pitt really elevated "Thelma and Louise" and was a cool addition to "True Romance" as well. Not sure if he stole the whole show on either case but small screen time and memorable role for sure.
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u/erikrolfsen 7d ago edited 7d ago
Donald Sutherland in JFK.
He’s just sitting on a park bench talking, and the scene is mostly expository, but it’s necessary because the protagonist and the audience are both really puzzled about what’s going on at that point.
He just comes across with this air of mystery, paranoia and legitimacy all at once, and we don’t even really know who he is. Can’t take your eyes off him.
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u/dubler2020 7d ago
On The Sopranos, when Uncle Phillie is in the car accident. Whatever happened there. The innocent bystander steals the scene.
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u/twobit211 7d ago
maybe not the greatest, but donald pleasence as hurst (a role that didn’t exist in the original play) in the film adaptation of look back in anger stole the show. and that’s opposite sir richard burton as the main character, jimmy porter
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u/eeejit075 7d ago
For me it’s Jeff Corey as Sheriff Bledsoe in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He is essentially a Greek chorus; he lays it out (rather harshly): “You’re gonna die ugly.”
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u/Single_Many597 7d ago
Not the best, but worth mentioning... Martin Short in Inherent Vice.
The entire movie just steps back and let's him work.
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