A STAR IS BORN
IMDb is out with its annual A-lists
Margot Robbie ( Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn) and Emilia Clarke ( Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen) lead IMDb’s top 10 stars of 2016.
Robbie (No. 1) and Clarke (No. 2) are part of a class of actresses with powerful characters who dominated the list, determined by page views of the movie site’s 250 million monthly unique visitors.
Stranger Things’ 12-year-old star Millie Bobby Brown landed third, along with Deadpool’s Morena Baccarin (No. 5), Wonder Woman Gal Gadot (No. 6), The
Danish Girl Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (No. 7), Star Wars: The
Force Awakens heroine Daisy Ridley (No. 8) and The Girl on a
Train’s Haley Bennett (No. 9). “These actresses are portraying remarkable female characters at the center of movie action this year, often protagonists in genres where women just didn’t excel before: action, comic books and sci-fi,” says Keith Simanton, IMDb’s senior film editor.
Robbie has been a force on the annual list since breaking out as Leonardo DiCaprio’s screen wife in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street (she was third in 2014 and 2015). In 2016, she starred as Jane Clayton in The Legend of Tarzan and bat-wielding antihero Quinn, who broke out of Suicide Squad’s pack. “She just popped. People just got it,” Simanton says.
Clarke maintained her second position from 2015’s list as GoT’s dragon queen, further boosted by her role in the sleeper hit Me
Before You with Sam Claflin. “Emilia’s obviously on the list because of Game of Thrones. But you cannot dismiss how popular
Me Before You was,” Simanton says.
Tom Hardy, who topped 2015’s top 10 list, hit No. 4 for 2016, alongside his The Revenant co-star Leonardo DiCaprio (No. 10), who won his first Oscar in February. “The Revenant was the talk of winter’s awards season, and these guys are huge stars,” Simanton says.
Brown also leads IMDb’s top 10 breakout stars of 2016, featuring stars who landed among the site’s annual 100 for the first time in their careers. As the buzz-cut supernatural Eleven in the Netflix series, Brown prompted curiosity and Internet searches. “Millie Bobby Brown is a classic example of people wanting to know, ‘Who is that?’ ” Simanton says.
Brie Larson was fifth among breakouts after 2015’s Room, for which she won a best-actress Oscar. She followed that with two event movies, Kong: Skull Island and Captain Marvel.
The breakout list also featured Evan Rachel Wood (No. 6), Dolores Abernathy in HBO’s West
world, and 50-year-old Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who made an impact as bat-smashing Negan in AMC’s The Walking Dead.
“The Walking Dead is finally getting Jeffrey Dean Morgan truly recognized,” Simanton says. “That’s pretty cool.”