The best actors are distinguished by their preternatural capacity to appear natural. They enter dreams and nightmares the way you and I enter our kitchens. An artist’s vision is lived, emotionally and physically, so that while a lesser performer will signboard motives and big moments, a subtler talent will experience the not always predictable flux of his character’s emotions as the larger dramatic pattern unfolds as though on its own.

That kind of performance requires more than instinct — it needs an interpretive intelligence to guide it discreetly along. No surprise, then, that the most unforgettable performers are usually the smartest ones — which is to say the deepest, philosophically and psychologically, as well as the most tactful, aesthetically and dramatically.