I don’t think anyone would argue that the 1980s were the heyday of action movies. Sure, there were action heroes in the sixties and seventies—great ones like Sean Connery, Steve McQueen, and Clint Eastwood—but in the eighties they were larger than life. This was the era of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and so many more.
Yet, the action genre seems to be dying out. Sure, there are still good action movies being made, with amazing folks like Bob Odenkirk, Jason Statham, Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson, and Charlize Theron carrying the torch. But the movies are on a smaller canvas in a lot of ways than they used to be—not for lack of trying.
This week, Noah Centineo was announced as playing a Vietnam-era John Rambo in an upcoming prequel, while the man himself, Stallone, is currently playing yet another defining character on his show Tulsa King. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger is still beloved, as are most of the other icons on the list below (well, maybe not Steven Seagal). So the time has come for JoBlo readers to tell us who they think is the best.
A note about this list: I tried to contain it to actors who had at least one huge action role in the eighties and who are mostly identified with the genre. I left off Eastwood because, to me anyway, he’s more of a timeless kind of guy without a specific heyday. Ditto Harrison Ford. I came close to putting Sigourney Weaver on the list, but in the end I left her off because, outside of Ellen Ripley, she’s not that identified with action. I also wanted to include the two biggest Asian action icons of the era, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat, because in their territories they arguably had bigger followings than anyone else on this list.
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