# What is Edward Norton's best performance?

> Oscar-nominated menace, deadpan comedy and a couple of roles you may have forgotten he played. Which version of Norton sticks with you?

*By YPB Team · Published October 31, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-edward-nortons-best-performance*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **American History X** — score 1000/1000
   His Oscar-nominated 1998 role as Derek Vinyard, a neo-Nazi trying to save his younger brother after prison.
2. **Red Dragon** — score 952/1000
   Norton plays FBI profiler Will Graham, hunting a killer with Hannibal Lecter's reluctant help.
3. **Everyone Says I Love You** — score 800/1000
   Woody Allen's 1996 musical comedy, with Norton singing and charming as the earnest fiancé Holden.
4. **Birdman** — score 762/1000
   His third Oscar-nominated role, as Mike Shiner, a brilliant and insufferable Broadway method actor.
5. **Glass Onion** — score 734/1000
   Norton plays Miles Bron, the blowhard tech billionaire hosting a murder-mystery weekend on his private island.
6. **Kingdom of Heaven** — score 659/1000
   Norton's masked, uncredited turn as the leper king Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott's crusades epic.
7. **The Grand Budapest Hotel** — score 659/1000
   Norton plays Inspector Henckels, the officer chasing a concierge across a fictional Alpine republic.
8. **Rounders** — score 571/1000
   Norton plays Worm, the reckless card-cheat friend who drags Matt Damon back into high-stakes poker.
9. **Motherless Brooklyn** — score 571/1000
   Norton wrote, directed and starred as Lionel Essrog, a detective with Tourette syndrome in 1950s New York.
10. **Keeping the Faith** — score 571/1000
   Norton's 2000 directing debut, in which he plays a priest caught in a love triangle with his best friends.
11. **Fight Club** — score 467/1000
   David Fincher's 1999 cult classic, with Norton as the insomniac Narrator opposite Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden.
12. **25th Hour** — score 467/1000
   Spike Lee's 2002 drama, with Norton as Monty Brogan spending his last day of freedom in post-9/11 New York.
13. **The Illusionist** — score 467/1000
   Norton plays Eisenheim, a stage magician in Habsburg Vienna whose tricks threaten a crown prince.
14. **The Score** — score 343/1000
   A 2001 heist thriller where Norton's slippery Jack Teller shares the screen with Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando.
15. **Primal Fear** — score 343/1000
   Norton's 1996 debut as altar boy Aaron Stampler, a turn that earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe.
16. **Moonrise Kingdom** — score 343/1000
   Wes Anderson's 2012 fable, with Norton as the earnest, overwhelmed Scout Master Ward.
17. **The Painted Veil** — score 343/1000
   Norton plays Walter Fane, a bacteriologist who drags his unfaithful wife into a cholera epidemic in 1920s China.
18. **The People vs. Larry Flynt** — score 0/1000
   Norton plays Alan Isaacman, the young lawyer defending Hustler's publisher all the way to the Supreme Court.
19. **The Incredible Hulk** — score 0/1000
   Norton's 2008 Marvel turn as Bruce Banner, on the run from the army and from himself.
20. **A Complete Unknown** — score 0/1000
   His fourth Oscar-nominated role, as folk singer Pete Seeger mentoring a young Bob Dylan.

Tags: movies, actors, performances, edward norton