1. Brad Pitt for The Tree of Life, Moneyball and Happy Feet Two
Forty-eight on Dec. 18, he still hears the music of dreamboat squeals from his fans. Now an alto chorus of critical approval has joined the Brad Pitt symphony. The New York Film Critics Circle gave him its Best Actor award for two exceptional performances. In The Tree of Life he plays Mr. O'Brien, a demanding father of three boys; he loves them but is unable to express it, barking out commands, because that's what a father does, when he wants nothing more than to hold them and be held in their esteem. In Moneyball, Pitt plays the sort of man Mr. O'Brien might wish he could be: Billy Beane, the real-life general manager of the Oakland As, who has a vision (of reviving his team with the smart application of statistics), knows how to communicate it and gets instant results. While Pitt poured his considerable star quality into playing Beane, he also got results as the film's producer, spending years coaxing the adaptation of Michael Lewis's best seller through many rewrites and three directors (finally settling on Bennett Miller). We'll add a third Pitt accolade: he does deliciously comic voice work as Will the Krill in Happy Feet Two. What actor this year could equal the man who has everything?