4. Charlize Theron, The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

4. Charlize Theron, The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

Featuring an especially robotic performance from Keanu Reeves and maybe the hammiest work of Al Pacino’s career—which is really saying something—Taylor Hackford’s ludicrous, good-versus-evil morality tale, The Devil’s Advocate, is rarely cited as a showcase for fine acting. (It’s rarely cited positively at all.) But the film boasts one truly remarkable turn, by a young actress making the most of a thankless role. Charlize Theron, who at that point had only appeared in a couple of other movies, co-stars as the new wife of Reeves’ hotshot Southern lawyer, who’s been poached by Pacino’s wickedly suave (or suavely wicked?) NYC attorney. Left to her own devices in big, scary Manhattan, a neglected Theron begins to succumb to demonic visions. As her character spirals into madness and desperation, the actress conjures a tempest of raw emotion completely out of sync with the otherwise tongue-in-cheek nature of the proceedings. Whenever she’s onscreen, the movie operates like a lost Roman Polanski film, as though Hackford had inserted a solid Rosemary’s Baby remake into the margins of his supernatural Scent Of A Woman parody. It was the first proof that Theron was more than a pretty face—though she’d have to obscure those good looks, via her Oscar-winning performance in 2003’s Monster, before Hollywood would really notice.