PROMO: The 10 Best Performances by Actors Sharing a Role

Although Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia is the role that would win Tom Hanks his first Oscar, many forget that he was first nominated for his truly outstanding performance as Josh Baskin in Big. Hanks plays the more physically mature version of Josh (though not technically older), having become a grown man after his true 12-year-old self (played by David Moscow) wished on a carnival machine (Zoltar!) that he was... well, you know... big. Moscow handles his portion of the role, which bookends the movie, with a fantastic adolescent awkwardness, and Hanks takes what could have otherwise been a total hackfest and delivers an incredibly layered performance.

Speaking of Oscars, the previously unknown Geoffrey Rush stormed onto the scene with his 1996 tour-de-force portrayal of David Helfgott, the real-life concert pianist who struggled with both mental illness and an abusive, overbearing father (Oscar nominee Armin Mueller-Stahl). The performance won Rush an Oscar for Best Actor, made the Russian composer Rachmaninoff a household name (at least in the households of arthouse film enthusiasts), and also featured exceptional performances by Alex Rafalowicz and Noah Taylor as the childhood and adolescent versions of David, respectively.

There was a lot of pressure on the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, with rabid Trekkies on one end ready to pounce at any transgression over the franchise's folklore, and nerd-bashers on the other simply ready to dismiss the film as a boring pit stop in dorkville. But director J.J. Abrams pulled things off handily, thanks in no small part to the work of Zachary Quinto as a young Spock, whose half-human DNA begets him much more fiery emotion (subdued though it may be) than other Vulcans. Halfway through the film, Chris Pine's Captain Kirk stumbles across an older version of Spock (played by the original and legendary Leonard Nimoy, now 81 years old, and here credited technically as "Spock Prime"), who reveals that he accidentally time traveled due to a mysterious space lightning storm (just go with it). In a moment that will live in nerdfamy, the ending of the film has an encounter between Mr. Nimoy and Mr. Quinto, who holds his own incredibly well up against the man who taught us all to "live long and prosper."

There are definitely six degrees to Kevin Bacon's creepiness in Barry Levinson's 1996 film, which is based on a book by Lorenzo Carcaterra that may or may not be a true story. The film features a quartet of childhood friends who, after a careless accident, are sent to the worst home for wayward boys since Oliver Twist (actually, worse—the only thing Oliver had to deal with was not getting more porridge). The film is split between the four boys' childhood and the period of time when they are reunited as adults after two of them seek revenge against Bacon's less-than-lovely character. Brad Pitt, Jason Patric, Ron Eldard and Billy Crudup play the adult versions of the crew, with Joe Perrino, the late Brad Renfro, Geoffrey Wigdor and Jonathan Tucker (who later became a fave of director Paul Haggis) portraying their respective childhood versions.

From a vengeful D.A. to the coolest alter-ego you could ever imagine, Brad Pitt famously played Tyler Durden in David Fincher's 1999 cult classic Fight Club, based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk. Edward Norton plays the film's other lead, referred to only as "Narrator" in the credits, who, together with Pitt's Tyler, founds an underground fight club with only two rules: you do not talk about it and you do not talk about it. The twist to the film is that Tyler and the Narrator are the same person, with Pitt's character merely being a personality created by Norton's because of his own insecurities (we hope we're not spoiling this, it's been a 13 years).

Face/Off is a special case (in so many ways, really) in so far as it doesn't have two actors playing one character, it has two actors playing the same two characters. Confused? Fair enough. (So was John Woo, as far as we can tell.) For the beginning and the end of the film, John Travolta plays uptight, driven-by-the-desire-to-avenge-his-son's-murder government agent Sean Archer, who is dead-set on capturing the elusive super villain Castor Troy, played in the beginning and the end of the film by Nicolas Cage. Well, technically Cage is Castor only in the beginning, as Castor suffers a timely demise before re-assuming Cage's face (don't ask). Anyhow, for the middle section of the film, thanks to a "revolutionary medical technique" (known as "strained credulity") Archer and Troy switch faces, and Travolta and Cage switch roles. Logic mayhem ensues!

Tom Hanks's second Best Actor Oscar in as many years came with 1994's Forrest Gump, the film that launched a thousand horrific imitations. Michael Conner Humphreys plays Forrest as a boy, and does a fine job opposite Sally Field (as Mama Gump) even as he is forced to gimp around in leg braces most of the time. As for Mr. Hanks' performance, to call it "iconic" would be an understatement, and the film marked the first of many collaborations for him with director Robert Zemeckis.

Okay, we're bending the rules here a bit to cover the same iconic role that stretches across two iconic pictures. Marlon Brando won the Best Actor Oscar in 1973 for his portrayal of Don Vito Corleone, and just one year later, Robert DeNiro won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for portraying a younger version of Vito in The Godfather, Part II (a film that is geniously both prequel and sequel). This marked not just the only time that two different actors won an Oscar for playing the same role, but also the only time that both said actors didn't show up for their respective Oscar ceremonies.

Before Christian Bale was saving Gotham from a nuclear bomb, the Joker, and Katie Holmes' acting, he was busy shedding an ungodly amount of weight (a feat Bale would repeat in Rescue Dawn, The Fighter and any number of as-yet-unfilmed pictures) to play an incredibly distressed factory worker in Brad Anderson's 2004 psychological thriller. In the film, Bale's character, Trevor Reznik, who hasn't slept in a year, is being stalked by a creepy man of few words named Ivan (played by John Sharian), whom Trevor is convinced is out to do him harm. As it turns out, Trevor's insomnia is the lingering result of the horrible guilt he feels over a hit-and-run accident he was involved in, and Ivan is not actually a real person, but the manifestation of Trevor's own psychological torture. The film's climax features a top notch moment for Bale, in which he mutters the words "I know who you are" to Ivan (i.e. himself).

As far back as the late Henry Hill could remember, he always wanted to be a gangster. Thus begins Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece, robbed at the Oscars by Dances With Wolves (yeah, let that sink in). In the film, Henry is predominantly played by the ever-slimy, always intimidating Ray Liotta. But for the first chunk of the movie, which includes some of its best scenes (the mailman getting his head stuck in the oven, Paulie exclaiming "you broke your cherry," the list goes on and on) Henry is played by Christopher Serrone, who is a good match for Liotta, not only because of his blue eyes, but also because of his subdued innocence (very soon to be lost) and flawed nice guy appeal.