100 Most Memorable Film Characters Of All Time: Nominations 61 thru 80
the money and try to keep it hidden. At the moral center of this morality play is Billy Bob Thornton's character of Jacob, a sad and lonely man who has always had to watch his brother find happiness and success, and now suffers through the feelings of evil when things start to turn violent. Especially moving is the scene where Jacob asks his brother (Bill Paxton) if he's ever truly felt like he was evil now, or when he describes how great it would be just to be able to kiss a woman.
71) Johnny Gray in THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton) Chaplin may have been the international star in the silent days of cinema, but Buster Keaton was perhaps the best comic genius. Keaton was a master at physical gags, and a master at developing characters who could be so funny and so simple at the same time. Keaton typically did his own stunts, and one of his most amazing film achievements was this 1926 film. Keaton's Johnny Gray is a man out for the heart of a woman, who can't enlist in the services to fight in the Civil War, but ultimately becomes an unwitting hero (as Keaton's characters so often did) when he ends up on a train.
70) Sister Helen Prejean in DEAD MAN WALKING (Susan Sarandon) No film has tackled the difficult issues of the death penalty like Tim Robbins's absorbing 1995 film did. Sister Helen Prejean, a real life person, is a person caught up in the two worlds of views on the death penalty. On the one hand, she endures the pain when talking to the families of two young teens who were murdered, and then try to also see the need to save a man's soul as she befriends the man in prison who helped kill them. Sarandon's best performance shows her trying to save a man's soul while being shunned by the families who can't understand why should befriend a murderer. There were no easy answers in this powerful film, and Helen Prejean remains a powerful figure around which the issues of the death penalty will continue to swirl.
69) Joe Clay in DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (Jack Lemmon) Jack Lemmon was always a master at playing the common man, and he was so incredibly moving in this 1962 powerhouse drama playing an alcoholic who ends up getting his wife hooked on alcohol, in
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