ZML

Twelve stars

ZML is an English guide to 156 films of twelve actors, thirteen films each. The idea comes from the old site itself: at the start of 2010, the big menu of zml.com listed its films in four ways, By Year, By Genre, By Letter and By Actor, and the By Actor list showed a column of famous names, each with the number of its films in brackets, from Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt to Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp. This guide takes twelve of those names and, for each, gathers the thirteen most voted films on TMDB in which the actor is billed among the first four names of the cast. Every film has an English synopsis, the cast, the director, the genres and a Watch now button that opens it on JustWatch, which shows where it can be watched in your country.

The guide runs from 1964, the year of A Fistful of Dollars, the first western of Sergio Leone with Clint Eastwood, to 2024, the year of Gladiator II, with Denzel Washington, and of Kung Fu Panda 4, with Dustin Hoffman as the voice of Master Shifu. Its 156 films carry about 1,317,000 votes on TMDB, with an average rating of 7.09, and seventeen of them reach a rating of 8 or more. The most voted film of the guide is Fight Club, of 1999, with Brad Pitt and about 33,100 votes, and the best rated is Pulp Fiction, of 1994, with John Travolta, Bruce Willis and an 8.5. The guide Start with ZML picks a few films from each family for a first evening, and the guide How the films were chosen sets out the rules.

The three families

The twelve actors sit in three families by year of birth, four in each, so the families follow three generations of Hollywood stardom. The first family, Born before 1943, holds the elders: Clint Eastwood, born in 1930, Dustin Hoffman and Anthony Hopkins, both born in 1937, and Harrison Ford, born in 1942. Their 52 films carry about 395,700 votes, with an average rating of 7.25, the best of the three families, and the guide Born before 1943 sums them up.

The second family, Born 1943 to 1955, holds Christopher Walken, born in 1943, John Travolta and Denzel Washington, both born in 1954, and Bruce Willis, born in 1955: four actors who became stars between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. Their 52 films carry about 341,000 votes, with an average of 6.94, and the guide Born 1943 to 1955 sums them up. The third family, Born 1961 to 1971, holds Eddie Murphy, born in 1961, Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt, both born in 1963, and Ewan McGregor, born in 1971, the youngest of the twelve. Their 52 films carry about 580,500 votes, the most of the three families, with an average of 7.07, and the guide Born 1961 to 1971 sums them up.

How the films were chosen

The rule is simple: for each actor, the films of TMDB in which the actor appears among the first four names of the cast, documentaries aside, sorted by number of votes, with the first thirteen kept. A voice role counts like any other, so Eddie Murphy's shelf opens with the four Shrek films, in which he plays Donkey, and Dustin Hoffman's with the four Kung Fu Panda films, in which he plays Master Shifu. A film appears on one shelf only: when two of the twelve share a film, it goes to the one billed higher, so Pulp Fiction sits with John Travolta rather than Bruce Willis, Twelve Monkeys with Bruce Willis rather than Brad Pitt, and Man on Fire with Denzel Washington rather than Christopher Walken. The guide The crossovers lists these meetings.

The votes favour the films of the last thirty years and the great franchises, so the shelves hold more blockbusters than a critic would choose: four Pirates of the Caribbean films for Johnny Depp, four Indiana Jones films and three Star Wars films for Harrison Ford, three Star Wars prequels for Ewan McGregor and four Die Hard films for Bruce Willis. Each shelf still keeps the films that made each actor famous, from The Graduate and Saturday Night Fever to Trainspotting.

Three more lists

Three more lists cut across the twelve shelves. Before 1980 gathers the ten oldest films of the guide, from A Fistful of Dollars, of 1964, to Escape from Alcatraz, of 1979, oldest first: three westerns of Sergio Leone, The Graduate, Dirty Harry, Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, The Deer Hunter and Escape from Alcatraz, the last film Eastwood made with Don Siegel. Since 2010 gathers the 47 films released from 2010 on, from The Book of Eli to Gladiator II, and Rated 8 or more gathers the seventeen films rated 8 or more on TMDB, best first, from Pulp Fiction and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to Million Dollar Baby.

Born before 1943

The first family gathers four actors born between 1930 and 1942 whose careers began in the 1950s and 1960s and still ran in the 2020s. Two of them, Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford, became the great heroes of the westerns and the adventure films; the two others, Dustin Hoffman and Anthony Hopkins, became the great character actors of their generation, with two Academy Awards each for best actor.

Clint Eastwood

The shelf Clint Eastwood gathers thirteen films from 1964 to 2018 with about 67,200 votes and an average rating of 7.63, the best of all twelve shelves, and four of its films reach 8. Eastwood directed six of them himself. The most voted is Gran Torino, of 2008, with about 11,900 votes and an 8.0, in which he plays Walt Kowalski, a bitter veteran of the Korean War who sets out to reform his neighbour, a Hmong teenager, after the boy tries to steal his car. Close behind comes Million Dollar Baby, of 2004, with an 8.0, the boxing trainer Frankie Dunn and the young boxer Maggie, played by Hilary Swank, with Morgan Freeman as the old fighter who runs the gym; it won the Academy Awards for best picture, director, actress and supporting actor.

The shelf goes back to the three westerns that made Eastwood a star in Europe, all directed by Sergio Leone and all spoken in Italian: A Fistful of Dollars, of 1964, the oldest film of the guide, a stranger who plays two rival families of a Mexican village against each other; For a Few Dollars More, of 1965, with an 8.0, two bounty hunters on the trail of the bandit El Indio, with Lee Van Cleef, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, of 1966, with an 8.5, the best rated film of the shelf, three gunmen who hunt a hidden fortune in gold during the Civil War, with Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef, at 161 minutes the longest film of the shelf.

Back in America, Don Siegel directed him in two films of the shelf: Dirty Harry, of 1971, the San Francisco inspector Harry Callahan against a killer who calls himself Scorpio, and Escape from Alcatraz, of 1979, the true story of Frank Morris and the escape of 1962 from the island prison. Unforgiven, of 1992, with a 7.9, which he directed, sends the retired gunman William Munny out for one last bounty, with Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, and won the Academy Awards for best picture and director. The other films he directed are The Bridges of Madison County, of 1995, a photographer who spends four days with a farmer's wife in Iowa, played by Meryl Streep; A Perfect World, of 1993, an escaped convict, played by Kevin Costner, and the boy he kidnaps, with Eastwood as the Texas Ranger on their trail, and The Mule, of 2018, a florist in his eighties who becomes a drug courier, with Bradley Cooper. In the Line of Fire, of 1993, by Wolfgang Petersen, makes him a Secret Service agent haunted by the death of Kennedy, against John Malkovich, and Trouble with the Curve, of 2012, a baseball scout with failing eyesight, with Amy Adams as his daughter. The guide Clint Eastwood sums it up.

Dustin Hoffman

The shelf Dustin Hoffman gathers thirteen films from 1967 to 2024 with about 72,500 votes and an average rating of 7.03. Four of them are animated: the Kung Fu Panda films, of 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2024, in which Hoffman gives his voice to Master Shifu, the small red panda who trains Po, the clumsy panda voiced by Jack Black, to become the Dragon Warrior. The first is the most voted film of the shelf, with about 13,100 votes, and Kung Fu Panda 4 is the newest.

The best rated film of the shelf is Rain Man, of 1988, by Barry Levinson, with a 7.7: Hoffman plays Raymond Babbitt, an autistic savant, and Tom Cruise his younger brother, a car dealer who learns of him only after their father's death and takes him on a long road trip; it won the Academy Award for best picture and gave Hoffman his second award for best actor, after Kramer vs. Kramer. The oldest film of the shelf is The Graduate, of 1967, by Mike Nichols, his first great role, a young college graduate torn between an older woman, Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft, and her daughter. Levinson directed him again in Sleepers, of 1996, as a drunken lawyer, with Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro and Brad Pitt, the story of four friends abused in a reform school.

The other films show his range. In Hook, of 1991, by Steven Spielberg, he plays Captain Hook against Robin Williams as a grown Peter Pan; in Outbreak, of 1995, by Wolfgang Petersen, an army doctor who fights a deadly virus in a Californian town, with Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman; in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, of 2006, by Tom Tykwer, the old perfumer Giuseppe Baldini of eighteenth-century Paris, and in Stranger Than Fiction, of 2006, a professor of literature who helps a tax inspector, played by Will Ferrell, who hears his own life narrated by a voice. The comedies of the shelf are Meet the Fockers, of 2004, and Little Fockers, of 2010, with Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as the free-spirited parents of Ben Stiller, against Robert De Niro. The guide Dustin Hoffman sums it up.

Anthony Hopkins

The shelf Anthony Hopkins gathers thirteen films from 1980 to 2020 with about 94,900 votes and an average rating of 7.04, and three of them reach 8. The most voted is Thor, of 2011, by Kenneth Branagh, with about 22,900 votes, in which Hopkins plays Odin, the king of Asgard who banishes his proud son, played by Chris Hemsworth, to Earth. The best rated is The Silence of the Lambs, of 1991, by Jonathan Demme, with an 8.3: the young FBI trainee Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, seeks the help of the imprisoned psychiatrist and killer Hannibal Lecter to catch another murderer. Hopkins is on screen for only a short part of the film, yet it won him the Academy Award for best actor, and the film won the five main awards, for picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay.

Lecter returns twice on the shelf: in Hannibal, of 2001, by Ridley Scott, ten years later, hiding in Florence, with Julianne Moore as Clarice, and in Red Dragon, of 2002, by Brett Ratner, set before the first film, with Edward Norton as the agent who caught him and Ralph Fiennes as a new killer. The oldest film of the shelf is The Elephant Man, of 1980, by David Lynch, in black and white, with an 8.1: Hopkins plays Frederick Treves, the London surgeon who rescues the badly disfigured John Merrick, played by John Hurt, from a freak show. The Father, of 2020, by Florian Zeller, the newest film of the shelf, also with an 8.1, gave him his second Academy Award for best actor at the age of 83, as an old man whose memory fails him, with Olivia Colman as his daughter.

The rest of the shelf moves between history, fantasy and crime. In The Two Popes, of 2019, by Fernando Meirelles, he plays Pope Benedict XVI in conversation with the future Pope Francis, played by Jonathan Pryce; in Bram Stoker's Dracula, of 1992, by Francis Ford Coppola, the vampire hunter Van Helsing, against Gary Oldman, and in The Mask of Zorro, of 1998, by Martin Campbell, the old Zorro who trains his successor, played by Antonio Banderas. Fracture, of 2007, sets him as a husband on trial for shooting his wife against a young prosecutor played by Ryan Gosling; Beowulf, of 2007, by Robert Zemeckis, filmed with motion capture, makes him King Hrothgar; Noah, of 2014, by Darren Aronofsky, the old Methuselah beside Russell Crowe, and Transformers: The Last Knight, of 2017, by Michael Bay, an English lord who guards the secret history of the robots. The guide Anthony Hopkins sums it up.

Harrison Ford

The shelf Harrison Ford gathers thirteen films from 1977 to 2017 with about 161,100 votes and an average rating of 7.32. Ford holds three of the great characters of popular cinema, and the shelf has all three. He is Han Solo, the smuggler pilot of the Millennium Falcon, in the first three Star Wars films: Star Wars, of 1977, by George Lucas, the most voted film of the shelf with about 23,000 votes and an 8.2; The Empire Strikes Back, of 1980, by Irvin Kershner, the best rated with an 8.4, in which Han is frozen in carbonite, and Return of the Jedi, of 1983, by Richard Marquand, in which Luke Skywalker and his friends rescue him from Jabba the Hutt.

He is Indiana Jones, the archaeologist with the hat and the whip, in four films of Steven Spielberg: Raiders of the Lost Ark, of 1981, the race against the Nazis for the Ark of the Covenant, with Karen Allen; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, of 1984, set in India, with Kate Capshaw and Ke Huy Quan as the boy Short Round; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, of 1989, the search for the Holy Grail, with Sean Connery as his father, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, of 2008, set during the Cold War, with Cate Blanchett as a Soviet agent. And he is Rick Deckard, the blade runner who hunts artificial humans in the rainy Los Angeles of 2019, in Blade Runner, of 1982, by Ridley Scott, with Rutger Hauer, and again thirty years later in Blade Runner 2049, of 2017, by Denis Villeneuve, with Ryan Gosling, at 164 minutes the longest film of the shelf and its newest.

The last four films of the shelf give him supporting roles of his later career: the father of her new love, who loved her himself decades earlier, in The Age of Adaline, of 2015, with Blake Lively as a woman who stops ageing; the colonel who trains a gifted boy, played by Asa Butterfield, to command a space fleet in Ender's Game, of 2013; a cattle baron of the Old West in Cowboys & Aliens, of 2011, by Jon Favreau, with Daniel Craig, and a CIA officer in The Expendables 3, of 2014, with Sylvester Stallone. The guide Harrison Ford sums it up.

Born 1943 to 1955

The second family gathers four actors born between 1943 and 1955, and their shelves run from 1977 to 2024. Christopher Walken is the great supporting actor of the guide, with a single lead role among his thirteen films; John Travolta rose as a dancer of the late 1970s and returned in the 1990s; Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis became the great action stars of the 1990s and 2000s, one as a detective or a lone avenger, the other as the policeman who refuses to die.

Christopher Walken

The shelf Christopher Walken gathers thirteen films from 1978 to 2016 with about 59,100 votes and an average rating of 6.8, and two of them reach 8. Walken is billed second, third or fourth in twelve of them, so the shelf follows him in the films of others, often in a few scenes that steal the film. The most voted is Catch Me If You Can, of 2002, by Steven Spielberg, with an 8.0, the true story of the young con man Frank Abagnale, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, chased by an FBI agent played by Tom Hanks; Walken plays the father of the young man, a charming failure whom his son adores. The other film rated 8 is the oldest of the shelf, The Deer Hunter, of 1978, by Michael Cimino, three steelworkers of Pennsylvania sent to Vietnam, with Robert De Niro; Walken's role as Nick, the friend who stays in Saigon, won him the Academy Award for best supporting actor, and at 183 minutes it is the longest film of the whole guide.

His villains are among the most famous of the shelf: Max Shreck, the corrupt businessman of Gotham in Batman Returns, of 1992, by Tim Burton, with Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer; Max Zorin, the industrialist who plans to destroy Silicon Valley, in A View to a Kill, of 1985, the last James Bond film of Roger Moore, and Hatcher, the boss of a gold mine in the Amazon, in The Rundown, of 2003, with Dwayne Johnson. His single lead role is in The Dead Zone, of 1983, by David Cronenberg, after the novel by Stephen King: a schoolteacher who wakes from a coma of five years with the power to see the future of anyone he touches.

The comedies make up the rest of the shelf. In Click, of 2006, he plays Morty, the strange salesman who gives Adam Sandler a universal remote control that works on his own life; in Wedding Crashers, of 2005, the Secretary of the Treasury whose daughters attract Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn; in Blast from the Past, of 1999, a father who keeps his family in a fallout shelter for 35 years, with Brendan Fraser as his son; in Wayne's World 2, of 1993, a record producer, and in Seven Psychopaths, of 2012, by Martin McDonagh, a kidnapper of dogs, with Colin Farrell and Sam Rockwell. Stand Up Guys, of 2012, sets him with Al Pacino and Alan Arkin as three old gangsters on one last night, and Eddie the Eagle, of 2016, the newest film of the shelf, gives him the role of an American ski-jumping legend beside Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman. Walken also appears in four films of other shelves, Pulp Fiction, Hairspray, Man on Fire and Sleepy Hollow. The guide Christopher Walken sums it up.

John Travolta

The shelf John Travolta gathers thirteen films from 1977 to 2012 with about 74,800 votes and an average rating of 6.77. Its first film is the best rated of the whole guide and, after Fight Club, its most voted: Pulp Fiction, of 1994, by Quentin Tarantino, with about 31,100 votes and an 8.5, the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Travolta plays Vincent Vega, a hit man who talks about burgers in Paris with his partner, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and dances the twist with the wife of his boss, played by Uma Thurman, in one of the most famous scenes of the decade. Bruce Willis plays the boxer Butch in the same film, and Christopher Walken a soldier in a single scene.

Pulp Fiction relaunched a career that had begun with two hits of the disco years. The oldest film of the shelf is Saturday Night Fever, of 1977, by John Badham, in which he plays Tony Manero, a young man of Brooklyn who lives for Saturday night on the dance floor, and the next is Grease, of 1978, by Randal Kleiser, the musical of a high school of the 1950s, with Olivia Newton-John. Blow Out, of 1981, by Brian De Palma, makes him a sound engineer who records a car accident that may be a murder, and Look Who's Talking, of 1989, by Amy Heckerling, a taxi driver who falls for a single mother, played by Kirstie Alley, while her baby comments on everything in the voice of Bruce Willis.

After Pulp Fiction he became an action star. In Face/Off, of 1997, by John Woo, an FBI agent and a terrorist, played by Travolta and Nicolas Cage, swap faces by surgery and then swap roles as actors; in Swordfish, of 2001, he is a rogue agent who forces a hacker, played by Hugh Jackman, into a bank robbery; in The Punisher, of 2004, a crime boss against Thomas Jane; in From Paris with Love, of 2010, by Pierre Morel, a reckless American agent in Paris, at 92 minutes the shortest film of the shelf, and in Savages, of 2012, by Oliver Stone, a corrupt drug agent. The family films are Bolt, of 2008, in which he gives his voice to a dog who believes that the superpowers of his television series are real, Wild Hogs, of 2007, four friends of the suburbs on a motorcycle trip, and Hairspray, of 2007, the Baltimore musical of 1962, in which he plays Edna Turnblad, the mother of the heroine, with Christopher Walken as her husband. The guide John Travolta sums it up.

Denzel Washington

The shelf Denzel Washington gathers thirteen films from 1993 to 2024 with about 82,400 votes and an average rating of 7.08, and Washington is billed first in eleven of them, more than any other actor of the guide except Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis, who match him. Antoine Fuqua directed four: Training Day, of 2001, with a 7.5, a corrupt narcotics detective of Los Angeles who tests a rookie, played by Ethan Hawke, on his first day, the role that won Washington the Academy Award for best actor; The Equalizer, of 2014, the most voted film of the shelf with about 10,300 votes, a quiet hardware store worker of Boston who takes on the Russian mob to protect a young girl, played by Chloë Grace Moretz; its sequel, The Equalizer 2, of 2018, and The Magnificent Seven, of 2016, the remake of the western of 1960, itself drawn from Seven Samurai, with Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke.

Tony Scott directed him in two films of the shelf: Man on Fire, of 2004, a former CIA agent who becomes the bodyguard of a girl in Mexico City, played by Dakota Fanning, and turns to revenge when she is kidnapped, with Christopher Walken as his old friend, and Déjà Vu, of 2006, a federal agent who uses a strange surveillance machine to look back in time after a bombing in New Orleans. Ridley Scott directed him twice as well: in American Gangster, of 2007, the longest film of the shelf at 157 minutes, he plays Frank Lucas, the drug lord of Harlem in the 1970s, against Russell Crowe as the detective who brings him down, and in Gladiator II, of 2024, the newest film of the guide, Macrinus, a scheming dealer in gladiators of ancient Rome, beside Paul Mescal.

The best rated film of the shelf, and its oldest, is Philadelphia, of 1993, by Jonathan Demme, with a 7.7: Washington plays Joe Miller, a lawyer who agrees to defend a colleague, played by Tom Hanks, fired by his law firm because he has AIDS. Inside Man, of 2006, by Spike Lee, makes him a hostage negotiator facing a clever bank robber, played by Clive Owen, with Jodie Foster; Flight, of 2012, by Robert Zemeckis, an airline pilot who saves his passengers in a crash landing but drinks and takes drugs; The Book of Eli, of 2010, a lone traveller who crosses a ruined America to protect a book, against Gary Oldman, and 2 Guns, of 2013, the shortest film of the shelf, two undercover agents, played by Washington and Mark Wahlberg, who rob a bank, each unaware of who the other really is. The guide Denzel Washington sums it up.

Bruce Willis

The shelf Bruce Willis gathers thirteen films from 1988 to 2019 with about 124,700 votes and an average rating of 7.1. The most voted and the best rated is The Sixth Sense, of 1999, by M. Night Shyamalan, with about 13,500 votes and an 8.0: Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist who tries to help a nine-year-old boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, who sees the dead. Shyamalan directed him in two more films of the shelf, which form a trilogy with Split: Unbreakable, of 2000, a security guard who walks unhurt from a train crash and discovers his strength, with Samuel L. Jackson as a fragile collector of comics, and Glass, of 2019, the newest film of the shelf, which brings the two back with James McAvoy.

Four films of the shelf belong to the Die Hard saga, with Willis as the New York policeman John McClane. Die Hard, of 1988, by John McTiernan, with a 7.8 and about 12,800 votes, the oldest film of the shelf, traps him in a Los Angeles skyscraper taken by robbers led by Alan Rickman on Christmas Eve; Die Hard 2, of 1990, by Renny Harlin, moves the fight to a Washington airport a year later; Die Hard: With a Vengeance, of 1995, by McTiernan again, sends him across New York on the riddles of a bomber played by Jeremy Irons, with Samuel L. Jackson as a shopkeeper of Harlem, and A Good Day to Die Hard, of 2013, takes him to Moscow with his son, with a 5.3, the lowest rating of the whole guide.

The science fiction films of the shelf are some of its best. The Fifth Element, of 1997, by Luc Besson, the only French film of the guide, makes him a taxi driver of the twenty-third century who must save a mysterious young woman, played by Milla Jovovich, and with her the whole planet; Twelve Monkeys, of 1995, by Terry Gilliam, a convict sent back in time to stop a deadly virus, with Brad Pitt as a patient of a mental hospital; Looper, of 2012, by Rian Johnson, a hired killer who must kill his own older self, played by Willis, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young one, and Armageddon, of 1998, by Michael Bay, at 151 minutes the longest film of the shelf, a team of oil drillers sent to blow up an asteroid before it hits the Earth. Sin City, of 2005, by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, filmed in black and white after Miller's comics, makes him an old cop who protects a girl, and RED, of 2010, a retired CIA agent who gathers his old colleagues, with John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman. The guide Bruce Willis sums it up.

Born 1961 to 1971

The third family gathers four actors born between 1961 and 1971, and it is the most voted of the three, with about 580,500 votes, more than two in five of the whole guide. Its shelves are full of franchises and voices: Eddie Murphy as Donkey, Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, Ewan McGregor as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi; but the family also holds Fight Club, Se7en and Trainspotting, three of the great films of the 1990s.

Eddie Murphy

The shelf Eddie Murphy gathers thirteen films from 1983 to 2011 with about 91,500 votes and an average rating of 6.68. Its first four films by votes are the Shrek films, of 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010, in which Murphy gives his voice to Donkey, the endless talker who follows the ogre voiced by Mike Myers; the first, with about 19,500 votes, is the most voted of the shelf and won the first Academy Award for best animated feature. The best rated is another voice role, Mulan, of 1998, by Disney, with a 7.9, in which Murphy plays Mushu, the small dragon who guards the young woman who takes her father's place in the army of the Emperor of China.

The oldest films of the shelf are the comedies that made him the great comic star of the 1980s, after his years on Saturday Night Live. In Trading Places, of 1983, by John Landis, two rich brothers make a bet and swap the lives of a snobbish trader, played by Dan Aykroyd, and a street hustler, played by Murphy; in Beverly Hills Cop, of 1984, by Martin Brest, he is Axel Foley, a Detroit policeman who comes to Beverly Hills to find the killer of his friend, a role he plays again in Beverly Hills Cop II, of 1987, by Tony Scott, and in Coming to America, of 1988, by Landis again, he is Akeem, a prince of the African kingdom of Zamunda who looks for a wife in Queens, and three other characters as well; at 117 minutes it is the longest film of the shelf.

Several roles in one film became his trademark. In The Nutty Professor, of 1996, he plays the shy and heavy scientist Sherman Klump, his slim and arrogant other self Buddy Love and most of the Klump family at the dinner table, seven roles in all, and in Norbit, of 2007, three: a gentle man, the giant wife who bullies him and the old owner of an orphanage. The shelf ends with Doctor Dolittle, of 1998, a doctor who can talk with animals, at 85 minutes its shortest film, and Tower Heist, of 2011, by Brett Ratner, a small-time thief who helps the staff of a luxury tower, led by Ben Stiller, rob the billionaire who stole their pensions. The guide Eddie Murphy sums it up.

Johnny Depp

The shelf Johnny Depp gathers thirteen films from 1990 to 2017 with about 168,700 votes, the second highest of the twelve shelves, and an average rating of 7.04. Four of its films are Pirates of the Caribbean films with Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, the swaying pirate with kohl around his eyes: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, of 2003, by Gore Verbinski, the most voted and the best rated of the shelf with about 22,900 votes and a 7.8; Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, of 2006, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, of 2007, by the same director, the second at 169 minutes the longest film of the shelf, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, of 2011, by Rob Marshall, with Penélope Cruz.

Six films of the shelf are by Tim Burton, his favourite director. The oldest is Edward Scissorhands, of 1990, with a 7.7, an artificial young man with scissors for hands taken in by a family of the suburbs, with Winona Ryder; then come Sleepy Hollow, of 1999, the constable Ichabod Crane against a headless horseman, played by Christopher Walken; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, of 2005, Willy Wonka and his factory, after the book by Roald Dahl; Corpse Bride, of 2005, made with Mike Johnson in stop-motion, a shy young man who marries a dead bride by mistake, at 77 minutes the shortest film of the whole guide; Alice in Wonderland, of 2010, with Depp as the Mad Hatter and Mia Wasikowska as Alice, and Dark Shadows, of 2012, a vampire freed from his tomb in the 1970s, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Eva Green. Helena Bonham Carter, Burton's partner of those years, appears in four of these films, and with Alice Through the Looking Glass, Big Fish and Fight Club she is in seven films of the guide, as many as Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee and James Hong, the most of anyone outside the twelve.

The rest of the shelf continues the fantasy. Alice Through the Looking Glass, of 2016, by James Bobin, brings back the Mad Hatter; Rango, of 2011, by Gore Verbinski, gives Depp the voice of a pet chameleon who becomes the sheriff of a desert town, and won the Academy Award for best animated feature, and Murder on the Orient Express, of 2017, by Kenneth Branagh, the newest film of the shelf, casts him as Ratchett, the American businessman whose murder on the train Hercule Poirot must solve. The guide Johnny Depp sums it up.

Brad Pitt

The shelf Brad Pitt gathers thirteen films from 1995 to 2019 with about 207,100 votes, the most of all twelve shelves, and an average rating of 7.51, second only to Clint Eastwood; three of its films reach 8. The most voted film of the whole guide is here: Fight Club, of 1999, by David Fincher, with about 33,100 votes and an 8.4, in which an insomniac office worker, played by Edward Norton, meets the soap salesman Tyler Durden, played by Pitt, and together they found a secret club of bare-knuckle fights. Fincher directed him in two more films of the shelf: Se7en, of 1995, the oldest of the shelf, also with an 8.4, the young detective Mills who hunts a killer inspired by the seven deadly sins with an old colleague played by Morgan Freeman, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, of 2008, at 166 minutes the longest film of the shelf, a man born old who grows younger all his life, with Cate Blanchett.

Quentin Tarantino directed him twice. In Inglourious Basterds, of 2009, with an 8.2, he is Lieutenant Aldo Raine, the leader of a band of Jewish American soldiers who hunt Nazis in occupied France, and in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, of 2019, the newest film of the shelf, Cliff Booth, the stunt double and friend of a fading television star, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in the Los Angeles of 1969; the role won Pitt the Academy Award for best supporting actor. Steven Soderbergh directed him as Rusty Ryan, the right hand of George Clooney, in Ocean's Eleven, of 2001, the robbery of three casinos of Las Vegas, and in Ocean's Twelve, of 2004, which takes the gang to Europe.

Three films send him into battle: Troy, of 2004, by Wolfgang Petersen, with Pitt as Achilles; Fury, of 2014, by David Ayer, the commander of an American tank in Germany in April 1945, and World War Z, of 2013, a former investigator of the United Nations who travels the world to stop a zombie pandemic. Mr. & Mrs. Smith, of 2005, by Doug Liman, makes him and Angelina Jolie a bored married couple who discover that each is a hired killer; Snatch, of 2000, by Guy Ritchie, at 103 minutes the shortest film of the shelf, an Irish traveller and bare-knuckle boxer whose speech few can follow, and The Big Short, of 2015, by Adam McKay, a retired banker who helps two young investors bet against the housing market before the crash of 2008. Pitt also appears in Twelve Monkeys and Sleepers, on the shelves of Bruce Willis and Dustin Hoffman. The guide Brad Pitt sums it up.

Ewan McGregor

The shelf Ewan McGregor gathers thirteen films from 1996 to 2019 with about 113,100 votes and an average rating of 7.05. McGregor is the youngest of the twelve actors and the only Scot, and his three most voted films link him to Harrison Ford: in the Star Wars prequels of George Lucas he plays the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi played by Alec Guinness in the Star Wars of 1977. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, of 1999, is the most voted film of the shelf, with about 16,300 votes; Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, of 2002, follows, and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, of 2005, the best rated of the three with a 7.5, ends with his duel against his pupil Anakin Skywalker.

The best rated film of the shelf, and its oldest, is Trainspotting, of 1996, by Danny Boyle, with an 8.0: McGregor plays Mark Renton, a young heroin addict of Edinburgh who tries to get clean and to escape his friends, with Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle. Big Fish, of 2003, by Tim Burton, makes him the young Edward Bloom, a teller of tall tales played in old age by Albert Finney, and Moulin Rouge!, of 2001, by Baz Luhrmann, a young English writer who falls in love with the star of a Paris cabaret of 1899, played by Nicole Kidman, in a musical built from pop songs of the twentieth century.

The rest of the shelf moves through genres. Black Hawk Down, of 2001, by Ridley Scott, follows American soldiers in the battle of Mogadishu of 1993; The Impossible, of 2012, by J. A. Bayona, a family caught in the tsunami of 2004 in Thailand, with Naomi Watts and the young Tom Holland; Angels & Demons, of 2009, by Ron Howard, a priest of the Vatican beside Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, and The Island, of 2005, by Michael Bay, a man who learns that he is a clone grown for spare parts, with Scarlett Johansson. Jack the Giant Slayer, of 2013, makes him a royal knight against giants; Robots, of 2005, at 90 minutes the shortest film of the shelf, gives him the voice of a young robot inventor, and Doctor Sleep, of 2019, by Mike Flanagan, the newest and at 152 minutes the longest film of the shelf, makes him the grown Danny Torrance, the boy of The Shining, after the novel by Stephen King. The guide Ewan McGregor sums it up.

The directors of the twelve stars

Some directors return to the same actor again and again. Tim Burton has eight films in the guide, six of them with Johnny Depp, from Edward Scissorhands to Dark Shadows, plus Batman Returns with Christopher Walken and Big Fish with Ewan McGregor. Clint Eastwood directed six films of his own shelf, and Steven Spielberg six films on three shelves: the four Indiana Jones films with Harrison Ford, Hook with Dustin Hoffman and Catch Me If You Can with Christopher Walken. Ridley Scott has five films on four shelves, from Blade Runner to Gladiator II, and George Lucas, Antoine Fuqua and Gore Verbinski four each. Seven directors have three: Sergio Leone, Wolfgang Petersen, Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott, M. Night Shyamalan and David Fincher. The guide The directors lists them all.

When two stars meet

Because each film sits on one shelf only, a few films join two or three of the twelve. Pulp Fiction holds three: John Travolta, Bruce Willis as the boxer Butch and Christopher Walken as a soldier. Twelve Monkeys sets Bruce Willis beside Brad Pitt; Look Who's Talking gives Willis the voice of the baby of John Travolta's story; Hairspray makes Walken the husband of Travolta; Man on Fire makes Walken the old friend of Denzel Washington; Sleepy Hollow gives Walken the headless horseman of Johnny Depp, and Sleepers sets Brad Pitt beside Dustin Hoffman. Walken, with appearances in four films of other shelves, is the great guest of the guide. The guide The crossovers sums them up.

ZML in figures

The 156 films of the guide run from 1964 to 2024 and carry about 1,317,000 votes on TMDB, with an average rating of 7.09, and seventeen of them reach a rating of 8 or more. By decade, the guide holds four films of the 1960s, six of the 1970s, seventeen of the 1980s, 31 of the 1990s, 51 of the 2000s, 44 of the 2010s and three of the 2020s. Together the films last about 18,900 minutes, more than 315 hours; the longest is The Deer Hunter, with 183 minutes, and the shortest is Corpse Bride, with 77. The United States is the first country of production of 122 films, and all the films are in English except the three westerns of Sergio Leone, in Italian, and The Fifth Element, in French. The lowest rated film is A Good Day to Die Hard, with a 5.3. The guide The figures gathers every number.

The look of ZML

The look of this guide comes from zml.com as archived by the Wayback Machine in January and March 2010, with its style sheets and its logo. At the top runs a black strip with small grey links; below it, the logo ZML.COM sits in black letters on a light cyan tab, #A6E6F2, with a rounded top-right corner. The introduction takes the place of the black promo banner of the old home page, with a white title and cream text, and the twelve actors form the By Actor menu, with their names in blue, #0A94D5, and their counts in brackets in the grey green of the old menus, #8DA7A8. Each row opens under a white tab on a grey strip, like the Hot Movies tab of 2010, and the posters carry blue underlined titles in Verdana. The guide The look of ZML explains each colour.

Where to begin

For a first evening, take one film from each family. From the elders, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for the western, Rain Man for the great performance or Raiders of the Lost Ark for pure adventure. From the middle family, Pulp Fiction, the best rated film of the guide, Die Hard for the action film at its peak or Training Day for Denzel Washington's award. From the youngest family, Fight Club, Trainspotting or Edward Scissorhands. Families with children can start with Shrek, Mulan, Kung Fu Panda and Robots.

How to use ZML

The home page opens with the black banner and the By Actor menu, a list of the twelve actors with their counts in brackets and their family below each name; each name leads to its row. Each row carries the name of the actor under a white tab, twelve posters and a link that opens the full shelf. The links in the black strip lead to the three families, and the search box finds any film by its title; the guide Search tips explains how.

Each poster shows the year and the TMDB rating at the top, with the surname of its actor on a black band at the bottom, for example Eastwood or McGregor. The film page has the English synopsis, the cast, the director and the genres. The Watch now button opens the film on JustWatch, which shows the services that offer it in your country, and the button Add to My List keeps it in My list, stored in your browser. The guide How to use ZML explains each part, and the guide The Watch now button explains how JustWatch works.

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