15 Best Performances In Alfred Hitchcock Movies

Summary

• Hitchcock’s legendary movies owed their success to talented actors like Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and James Stewart.
• Performances by stars like Janet Leigh and Robert Walker brought depth and intensity to Hitchcock’s iconic characters.
• Alfred Hitchcock’s collaborations with actors like Tippi Hedren and Anthony Perkins elevated his films.

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock worked with many of the best ac​​​​​​​tors of his time, and they delivered some ic​​​​​​​onic​​​​​​​ performances for him. His regular stars included Cary Grant, James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman and more. Eac​​​​​​​h of these actors elevated his movies in their own ways, delivering unforgettable performanc​​​​​​​es that have helped enshrine Hitchcock’s reputation as a legendary director.

Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies wouldn’t be the same without the input of some Hollywood icons. His movies often work by delving into the darkest c​​​​​​​orners of human psychology, so they need great actors. His most famous c​​​​​​​haracters, suc​​​​​​​h as Psycho‘s Norman Bates and North By Northwest‘s Roger Thornhill, wouldn’t be half as popular without the superb actors who breathed life into his work.

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Related Alfred Hitchcock’s Most Frequent Collaborators, Ranked

Like many famous directors, Alfred Hitchcock liked to reuse the same actors in his movies, with one actor starring in more films than any other. 

15 Robert Donat In The 39 Steps

Richard Hannay

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The 39 Steps

Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date July 31, 1935 Cast Robert Donat , Madeleine Carroll , Lucie Mannheim , Godfrey Tearle , Peggy Ashcroft , John Laurie , Helen Haye , Frank Cellier

Arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s first great masterpiece, The 39 Steps takes inspiration from the popular Robert Buchan novel of the same name to tell the story of a man accused of murder who finds himself enveloped in a dangerous game of espionage. Robert Donat’s performance as Richard Hannay sets the standard for many similar Hitchcock protagonists. He is charming and easy to spend time with. From the moment he is forced to abandon his dreary yet comfortable life, he is someone the audience wants to see succeed, and this has a lot to do with Donat’s performance.

14 Robert Walker In Strangers On A Train

Bruno Anthony

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date June 27, 1951 Cast Farley Granger , Ruth Roman , Robert Walker , Leo G. Carroll , Patricia Hitchcock , Kasey Rogers

Strangers on a Train follows two men who meet by chance and decide to solve each other’s problems by murdering someone in the other person’s life. Robert Walker plays Bruno, the pushier of the two men, and the one who follows through on his end of the bargain first. Bruno is a complex character, shown variously as needlessly callous and violent but also as a sympathetic man. One trait that he does not possess is patience, and Walker gradually becomes more frantic and threatening as he urges his accomplice to hold up his end of the deal.

13 Janet Leigh In Psycho

Marion Crane

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date September 8, 1960 Cast Janet Leigh , Martin Balsam , Anthony Perkins , John Gavin , Vera Miles

Psycho has a brilliant script, which transitions seamlessly from being a great horror movie to a great mystery movie. The turning point in the drama is Marion Crane’s death in the iconic shower scene. To make the second half of Psycho work, it’s important that Marion feels like a full and interesting character. Fortunately, Janet Leigh delivers a performance that makes her stand out. She conveys Marion’s hopes and her guilt in a short amount of time, and she is sympathetic enough to make the audience genuinely fear for her when she talks to Norman.

12 John Dall In Rope

Brandon Shaw

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date August 26, 1948 Cast James Stewart , John Dall , Farley Granger

Rope is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most experimental movies. It was his first movie shot in color and his first as a producer. It also famously uses long takes to give the illusion that the events of the story unfold in real time. In this way, Rope is similar to a stage play, but the performances still require the subtlety of film acting, and this is where John Dall is head and shoulders above his co-stars. He is slimy and calculated when convincing his friend to go through with committing the perfect crime, but he spends the rest of the evening with only a sly smugness to betray his actions.

11 Judith Anderson In Rebecca

Mrs. Danvers

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Rebecca

Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date April 12, 1940 Cast Laurence Olivier , Joan Fontaine , George Sanders , Judith Anderson , Nigel Bruce , Reginald Denny , C. Aubrey Smith , Gladys Cooper

Rebecca was Alfred Hitchcock’s first American production, and it proved that he could enjoy a long and successful career in Hollywood. Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca follows a newlywed couple starting their life together in the house once shared by the husband and his deceased wife, Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers, the obsessive housekeeper, is a supporting character even more compelling than the two leads. Judith Anderson floats about the halls of the large house like a ghost, or an embodiment of the protagonist’s knowledge that she can never live up to the idealized standards of Rebecca.

10 James Stewart In Rear Window

L.B. Jeffries

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date September 1, 1954 Cast Thelma Ritter , James Stewart , Wendell Corey , Grace Kelly , Raymond Burr

James Stewart runs the gamut of emotions in Rear Window. It’s no coincidence that L.B. Jeffries is first introduced while he’s sleeping. His boredom and malaise soon turn to curiosity as he spies on his neighbors. This develops into excitement and fear as his amateur investigation into one of his neighbors turns personal. Stewart has to do a lot of work while completely stationary in Rear Window. This makes it all the more exciting when he is forced into action, but he is still compelling even without too much extraneous influence.

9 Kim Novak In Vertigo

Judy Barton/ Madeleine Elster

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date May 9, 1958 Cast Tom Helmore , Barbara Bel Geddes , Kim Novak , James Stewart , Henry Jones

Although Scottie eventually figures out that Judy Barton and Madeleine Elster are the same person, he is deceived for a long time. Kim Novak’s performance is perfectly measured as one woman pretending to be two different women, but being torn apart by her guilt and her blossoming love for the detective. Judy Barton is vulnerable and submissive at times, but she has a hint of danger about her, born out of desperation. Vertigo‘s shocking ending kills her off for real in exactly the same way as her fake death, symbolically punishing her for her part in Gavin’s scheme.

8 Ingrid Bergman In Notorious

Alicia Huberman

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Notorious (1946)

Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date August 15, 1946 Cast Cary Grant , Ingrid Bergman , Claude Rains , Louis Calhern , Leopoldine Konstantin

Ingrid Bergman first worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1945’s Spellbound, but she saved her best performance for Notorious, a complex spy movie set after the Second World War, when many high-ranking Nazis have fled to South America. She and Cary Grant play a duo of spies who try to infiltrate a ring of Nazis, but their feelings for one another get in the way of their mission. Bergman is outstanding as a conflicted woman who desperately needs some trust and compassion in her life. Torn between love and duty, she comes to ac​​​​​​​cept that she is another commodity in the game of espionage.

7 Grace Kelly In Dial M For Murder

Margot Mary Wendice

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Grace Kelly worked with Alfred Hitc​​​​​​​hc​​​​​​​oc​​​​​​​k several times throughout her short career. Perhaps her greatest performance comes in Dial M for Murder, in which she plays a woman whose husband blackmails a man to kill her. When she gets the upper hand in the struggle, the husband pivots toward framing her for murder. Kelly is a picture of elegance throughout, but Margot’s manicured facade begins to fall away as the threat of her execution draws ever nearer. Kelly turns easily from prim respectability to true desperation.

6 Joseph Cotten In Shadow Of A Doubt

Charles Oakley

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Shadow of a Doubt

Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date January 15, 1943 Cast Teresa Wright , Joseph Cotten , Macdonald Carey , Henry Travers , Patricia Collinge , Hume Cronyn , Wallace Ford , Edna May Wonacott

Joseph Cotten is well known for his collaborations with Orson Welles, starring in Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Third Man. One of his best performances comes in Shadow of a Doubt, however, as he plays a killer who tries to lie low for a while in the comforting arms of his family. Only his niece figures out that affable, intelligent Charles Oakley isn’t the man he appears to be. Eventually, the mask slips, and he reveals his true nature as a cold-blooded brute interested only in self-preservation. Cotten turns on a dime, making the reveal extremely jarring.

5 Joan Fontaine In Suspicion

Lina McLaidlaw

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Suspicion (1941)

Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date November 14, 1941 Cast Cary Grant , Joan Fontaine , Cedric Hardwicke , Nigel Bruce , May Whitty , Isabel Jeans , Heather Angel , Auriol Lee

Of all Alfred Hitchcock’s illustrious collaborators, Joan Fontaine holds the surprising distinction of being the only actor to have won an Academy Award for a performance in one of his movies. In Suspicion, Fontaine plays a naive young woman who inadvertently allows a man to take advantage of her. They fall in love and marry quickly, but only then does she disc​​​​​​​over that he isn’t who he claims to be, and she begins to fear that he could even be a murderer. Fontaine’s c​​​​​​​haracter has to grow up fast. Her performance is the glue that holds the plot together through its constant twists and turns.

4 Cary Grant In North By Northwest

Roger Thornhill

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date September 8, 1959 Cast Eva Marie Saint , James Mason , Cary Grant , Leo G. Carroll , Jessie Royce Landis

Many Alfred Hitchcock movies feature cases of mistaken identity, and North By Northwest gives Cary Grant his chance to play a similar role. Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock worked together a few times. North By Northwest remains their most famous collaboration, as it blends intrigue with thrilling action. Grant is as charming as ever as Roger Thornhill, a man wrongly suspected of being a foreign spy. He retains his cool even while his character is being pursued relentlessly across the country or buzzed by a low-flying plane. He also makes a great romantic lead opposite Eva Marie Saint.

3 Tippi Hedren In The Birds

Melanie Daniels

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Director Alfred Hitchcock Release Date March 29, 1963 Cast Tippi Hedren , Suzanne Pleshette , Jessica Tandy , Veronica Cartwright , Rod Taylor

The Birds is perhaps Alfred Hitc​​​​​​​hc​​​​​​​ock’s greatest out-and-out horror movie, with a supernatural forc​​​​​​​e giving the director the opportunity to indulge his eerie side. Tippi Hedren plays Melanie Daniels, a socialite whose arrival in the sheltered community of Bodega Bay c​​​​​​​oincides with birds starting to attac​​​​​​​k humans. The reason for the attacks, and the reason they stop, are never explic​​​​​​​itly clarified. Hedren rides the line between uncertainty and fear. For Melanie, the motivations of the birds are only important when they suddenly stop, and she must step out into the world, unsure of how to keep the fragile peace.

2 Anthony Perkins In Psycho

Norman Bates

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Norman Bates is the best villain in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and one of the most iconic in film history. The shifty proprietor of the Bates Motel appears at first to be a timid, socially awkward man living under the spell of his domineering mother. Gradually, he is revealed to be a creep, a liar, and a psychotic murderer. Anthony Perkins’ portrayal is chilling throughout, even when Norman puts on his innocent face to talk to the police or make Marion feel comfortable. He is just unsettling enough to appear as if he is hiding something, but he doesn’t make anything too obvious.

1 James Stewart In Vertigo

John “Scottie” Ferguson

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James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock brought the best out of each other in the four movies they made together. Vertigo is arguably the pinnacle of their collaboration, a relentless psychological thriller about a retired detective hired to investigate his friend’s wife. Scottie is one of Hitchcock’s most intriguing characters, but Stewart is more than up to the task. He delivers a career-defining performance that balances Scottie’s anxieties with his dogged determination to unravel the mystery in front of him and do what’s right.

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