4. Daniel Day-Lewis

No other actor on this list embodies the dictum, ‘Less is More,’ than Sir Daniel Day-Lewis. His filmography is incredibly small despite his career, starting in theater and television in the early 1980s before making his big screen with his first critically acclaimed performance in the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette. He gained a reputation early on for being extremely selective about the roles he chose.

It wasn’t long in his early career before he gained a reputation for the incredible intensity and the commitment he was willing to put into his roles. He would become one of the most extreme proponents of method acting that Hollywood had ever seen by remaining in character throughout an entire shoot and often going to enormous lengths to embody whichever character he chose to play. Today he is the epitome of quality over quantity as, since 1997, he only appeared in six films, all of which garnered critical and public acclaim.