3. Woody Harrelson for Rampart
For eight years the blithely innocent bartender on Cheers, Woody Harrelson has matured into an actor of wide, weird range. As a media-savvy psycho in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, a porn king fighting for the First Amendment in The People vs. Larry Flynt, a Twinkies-addicted survivor in Zombieland and a bounty hunter in No Country for Old Men, Harrelson put a swagger in every scene, carving out a stark and engaging character: the wild American cowboy riding into the present on a stallion of lunatic machismo. His career topper may be playing Dave "Date Rape" Brown, an LAPD detective in director Oren Moverman's dark adaptation of a James Ellroy story. A dinosaur among the city's younger men and women in blue, Dave uses brutal methods to enforce the law; now he's under an investigation for beating a motorist, but he won't go down without a fatal fight. Harrelson, who's as worth watching at rest as when he detonates in calculated rage, pours such power into his character that viewers find themselves rooting for Dave even as they move to shield themselves from the imminent immolation. They become Dave's partners in crime, and Harrelson's willing, eager pawns.