# What is the best acting performance of Orson Welles?

> From a 26-year-old reinventing cinema to a giant of European art film, Welles brought volcanic charisma to heroes, villains, and morally ambiguous titans across five decades. Where do you stand?

*By YPB Team · Published April 10, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-acting-performance-of-orson-welles*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane)**
   The rise and fall of a media magnate obsessed with power and lost innocence in Citizen Kane (1941).
2. **Harry Lime (The Third Man)**
   A charming, amoral black-market racketeer in post-war Vienna in The Third Man (1949).
3. **Hank Quinlan (Touch of Evil)**
   A corrupt, imposing border-town police captain in Welles's own noir masterpiece Touch of Evil (1958).
4. **Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight)**
   The jovial, larger-than-life knight that Welles considered his greatest performance in Chimes at Midnight (1965).
5. **Gregory Arkadin (Mr. Arkadin)**
   A mysterious billionaire who hires a man to investigate his own forgotten past in Mr. Arkadin (1955).
6. **Othello (Othello)**
   The noble Moorish general destroyed by jealousy in Welles's acclaimed Shakespeare adaptation Othello (1951).
7. **Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre)**
   The brooding, dark-secreted master of Thornfield Hall in the gothic romance Jane Eyre (1943).
8. **Father Mapple (Moby Dick)**
   The passionate, fire-and-brimstone preacher delivering a legendary sermon in Moby Dick (1956).
9. **Jonathan Wilk (Compulsion)**
   A brilliant, morally ambiguous defense attorney loosely based on Clarence Darrow in Compulsion (1959).
10. **Will Varner (The Long Hot Summer)**
   A domineering Mississippi patriarch who sizes up a charismatic drifter in The Long Hot Summer (1958).
11. **The Advocate (The Trial)**
   A looming, labyrinthine lawyer in Welles's surreal adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (1962).
12. **General Dreedle (Catch-22)**
   A blunt, war-weary general in Mike Nichols's satirical anti-war epic Catch-22 (1970).
13. **Unicron (Transformers: The Movie)**
   Welles's final completed role: the booming voice of the planet-devouring chaos god Unicron in Transformers: The Movie (1986).
14. **Le Chiffre (Casino Royale 1967)**
   The villainous gambler in the satirical spy spoof Casino Royale (1967).

Tags: 20th-century, movies, actors, classics, performances, orson welles