The 25 Best Solo Performances: Top Movies Featuring a Lone Actor

Willem Dafoe plays Nemo, an art thief trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist of priceless art goes awry. Locked inside with nothing but art, he struggles to survive.

In this second film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s post-apocalyptic novel “I Am Legend,” Charlton Heston stars as an Army biologist who survived a biological war and is one of the few remaining humans left on the planet. To stay alive he must keep away from a pack of mutants led by an ex-television newscaster who are sensitive to light.

“Grand Piano” is about a pianist ( Elijah Wood) gripped by stage fright who receives a threatening note before a performance. Rotten Tomatoes called the taut film a one-trick pony that evoked the style of noted thriller director Brian DePalma (“Blow Out”).

“The Shallows” features a standout performance by Blake Lively as a medical student seeking solace in surfing in a secluded area known for shark attacks. A shark does indeed come at her and she has to swim to a rock for relative safety, nursing a wound as the shark circles the rock.

Strong ecological themes are prevalent in “Silent Running,” which stars Bruce Dern as an ecologist who oversees a greenhouse in space to preserve plants for future generations after all botanical life has ceased to exist on Earth. He rebels against orders to destroy the greenhouse in favor of carrying cargo and is forced to do anything to keep the greenery alive.

Rotten Tomatoes critics hailed David Oyelowo’s performance in “Nightingale” as “breathtaking.” Oyelowo, who played Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma,” here portrays an unstable man who’s killed his mother and talks to people on a video log about his obsession with a former Army friend. Critics also liked the use of the one-man, one-set format of the movie.

In this thriller set almost entirely in and around a New York City paid telephone booth (yes, they used to exist), Colin Farrell plays a media consultant trapped in a phone booth after a caller tells him that he’ll be killed by a sniper if he tries to leave tit. The film boasted a strong cast that included Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, and Radha Mitchell.

Will Smith reprises the role made famous by Charlton Heston in “The Omega Man” in a third screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel about an Army biologist who survives a man-made plague that’s created flesh-eating zombies on the hunt for him. Rotten Tomatoes critics called Smith’s performance “mesmerizing.”

Christopher Plummer plays American acting giant John Barrymore, who, months before his passing, is rehearsing for a revival of his triumphant performance in “Richard III,” which he played in 1920. Rotten Tomatoes critic James Plath called Plummer’s one-man performance a “tour de force.”

“The Last Man on Earth,” the first of three cinematic adaptations (so far) of Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend,” stars Vincent Price as the title character, a man immune to a plague that has turned most of humanity into vampires.

Ryan Reynolds stars as a civilian truck driver in Iraq whose convoy is attacked by insurgents. He awakens inside a coffin, with only a lighter and his cellphone, battling panic and claustrophobia hoping to be rescued.

Critics hailed Robert Redford’s performance as a lone sailor traversing the Indian Ocean who discovers his boat is taking on water after a collision with a container that tumbled off a ship. After barely surviving a violent storm, his supplies are dwindling and his hopes rest on sailing into a shipping lane. All the while, he takes stock of his life and contemplates his mortality.

Robert Altman’s often unsettling look at former President Richard Nixon in retirement in New Jersey depicts the disgraced ex-chief executive as he recalls his upbringing and tries to absolve himself of his role in the Watergate scandal. Philip Baker Hall’s performance as Nixon was lauded as “staggeringly good” by critic David Butterworth.

“Compelling” and “consuming” are descriptions from Rotten Tomatoes critics of Tom Hardy’s performance in “Locke.” Hardy plays a man whose life disintegrates in one day: He leaves hist a job supervising a large pour of concrete to be with a woman giving birth to his child, conceived in a one-night stand. While traveling to be with her, he confesses his infidelity to his wife who bans him from home – and he also loses his job.

In “The Machinist,” Christian Bale plays the title role as a man so afflicted with insomnia that it causes weight loss and a lack of concentration on the job that leads to a terrible accident involving a fellow worker. That further accelerates his descent into self-loathing and self-pity. Rotten Tomatoes critic Victoria Alexander described Bale’s performance as “brilliant, harrowing.”

Director Darren Aronofsky tells the story of the psychological disintegration of a math wiz in the film “Pi.” Sean Gullette played Max Cohen, a numbers genius who’s built a supercomputer in his Chinatown apartment. He stumbles upon a mysterious number and tells his mentor and a religious friend. His life is endangered when thugs acting on behalf of powerful Wall Street interests want the mysterious number for profit.

“Duel,” a TV movie, is one of Steven Spielberg’s earliest efforts. The gripping film stars television veteran Dennis Weaver (“McCloud,” “Gunsmoke”) as an electronics salesman who gets involved in an escalating cat-and-mouse game with the unidentified driver of an oil tanker on a highway.

“Life of Pi” won four Oscars, including one for director Ang Lee. After deciding to sell their zoo in India, Santosh and Gita Patel and their three sons leave on a freighter bound for Canada with their few remaining animals. A violent storm sinks the boat and only the teenage son, Pi (Suraj Sharma), survives. He finds refuge in a boat, but so does a Bengal tiger. What follows is a story about trust and survival.

Delphine Seyring stars as a widowed mother of a teenage boy living in Brussels whose daily ritual involves cleaning, cooking, shopping and working as a prostitute before her son comes home from school. When her routine is disrupted, it leads to deadly consequences. The film has a cult following and was named by a critics poll in the British monthly magazine Sight & Sound in 2022 as the greatest film of all time.

America’s Everyman, Tom Hanks, is on the screen by himself for most of this film. He plays a driven FedEx executive, the only survivor of a flight over the Pacific Ocean, who washes ashore on a deserted island. Though he survives for years, his repeated failed attempts to leave the island push him to the brink of suicide.

Buoyed by a career-making performance by James Franco, “127 Hours,” is one of eight films on our list with a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critics score of 90% or above. Franco played a mountain climber who while exploring a remote canyon in Utah has an arm pinned by a boulder. He faces the excruciating choice of either cutting off his arm and trying to find his way out of the canyon or remain there and die.

“Moon,” a sci-fi psychological thriller, is the creation of director Duncan Jones, the son of rock legend David Bowie, who captured the alienation of space in his song “Space Oddity.” In “Moon,” Sam Rockwell plays a lunar miner who’s coming to the end of his mission and looking forward to reuniting with his wife – but he experiences headaches and hallucinations and meets what appears to be a younger version of himself.

Charles Martin Smith, who played the accountant in “The Untouchables,” here takes the role of a research scientist sent to the Canadian tundra to find out if wolves are depleting the caribou herd. He gains knowledge of wolf behavior while discovering that it is humans who pose the greater threat to the cycle of life in the wilderness. “Never Cry Wolf,” the first Disney film to be released under the Walt Disney Pictures label, is the only movie on our list with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes Freshness score.

“The Guilty” is an acclaimed pulse-pounder from Denmark, directed by Swedish filmmaker Gustav Möller. It is about an alarm dispatcher and former police officer played by Jakob Cedergren who answers a call from a woman who’s been kidnapped. When the call is abruptly disconnected, a frantic search for her and her kidnapper begins. Rotten Tomatoes critics called the movie “a high-concept thriller that wrings maximum impact out of a handful of basic — and effective — ingredients.”

Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars after his fellow space travelers presume that he is dead. While he tries to survive on the red planet, NASA, scientists from other countries, and his fellow crew members race against time to return him to Earth. Based on a novel by Andy Weir, the film was directed by Ridley Scott (“Blade Runner,” “Gladiator”) and boasted a strong supporting cast that included Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, and Jeff Daniels.