Actor: Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone wrote Rocky himself and refused to sell the script unless he starred, while nearly broke, and was nominated for both acting and screenwriting when it won Best Picture.

The Rocky films work because the character loses regularly. First Blood is a genuinely sad film about a discarded veteran, and its sequels turned that into something else entirely, which he has acknowledged.

Copland is the performance that shows what he could have done more of, playing a deaf small-town sheriff with almost no dialogue, opposite De Niro and Keitel.

Creed earned him a nomination forty years after the first, playing Rocky as an old man watching someone else fight, and it is the best acting of his career.