Essential titles: Coffy, Foxy Brown, Friday Foster
The profile: Furious, capable, topped with the proudest Afro in movies
When Quentin Tarantino cast Greer in Jackie Brown (and showed off her range to an unexpected degree), he was paying homage to the actor's glorious '70s heyday, a moment where power, brains and sex appeal slammed together to form the perfect package. Other stars rode the blaxploitation subgenre just as far, but Greer remains the peak of the trend.
<pWe've got 100 reasons for you to get excited about action cinema in our ranked list of the top action movies of all time. But how about a neat 10? Without the following essential actors, we wouldn't know how to glare, karate kick, cock an imaginary shotgun or promise, “I'll be back.”
RECOMMENDED: Our list of the 100 best action movies ever made
We polled over 50 experts in the field, from essential directors like Die Hard’s John McTiernan to the actual folks in the line of fire, such as Tarantino favorite Zoë Bell (the fearless stuntwoman behind Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill movies). The result: The 100 best action movies, a definitive look at the genre from the earliest silent classic short film of 1896's “Arrival of Train at La Ciotat” to Marvel's big-screen fighting force of 2012's The Avengers.
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