Robin Williams

Improvisation was the engine. Robin Williams is regularly named among the greatest comedians who ever worked, on the strength of the characters he could invent on the spot and then discard. The accolades were spread across every discipline he touched: an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmys, six Golden Globes, five Grammys for his comedy records, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005.

The thing that made him singular on screen was the switch. He could go from a standing start into full flight, most famously as the Genie in Aladdin, where the animation had to be built around a performance that had already happened. But the far rarer trick was the opposite one: he could go completely still. Good Will Hunting is built on that stillness, a therapist who mostly listens and lets silence do the work, and it is the performance that won him the Oscar.

The later career had an appetite for menace that his public image never quite absorbed. One Hour Photo and Insomnia both cast him as a quiet man with something rotting behind the eyes, and World's Greatest Dad turned his warmth into something genuinely uncomfortable. He kept working in the family register too, three Night at the Museum films, Happy Feet, Jumanji, and the results there ranged from lovely to contractual.

He died in 2014, and the range on display in this filmography still looks like several careers stacked into one.