With 135 leading roles in feature films filmed between 1930 and 1976, according to Collider, the actor with the most leading roles is John Wayne! The number of 135 may not seem like much, as there are actors with a much richer filmography, such as Danny Trejo, Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts and many Bollywood actors. But although these actors sometimes make 12 films in the same year, most of the time they play secondary roles.
Likewise, Bruce Willis technically has over 140 films to his name, but in the later years of his career he only appeared in most of them for a few minutes of screen time.
Photo: I Love Cinema
So how did he achieve this feat?
In 1930, John Wayne was given the lead role in Raoul Walsh’s Western film The Great Journey. He made a few small films before working for the B-movie studios Leon Schlesinger Studios, Lone Star Productions, and Republic Pictures, for which he made between 7 and 11 Westerns a year, all of them prominently featured.
This lasted until 1939, a full decade, before director John Ford chose Wayne to star in the successful Stagecoach. The western marked the first collaboration between the two men, who would go on to make twelve other films together, not counting the “segmented” A Conquista do Oeste.
Read the article at QuandoCinema
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