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Schwarzenegger or Stallone? The greatest action star, by the world's votes

27 October 2026 · Actors

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Lists of the greatest actors are usually led by the giants of drama: Brando, Pacino, De Niro, Streep. Action stars rarely get near the top of a critics' poll, even though many of them sold more tickets than anyone else of their time. On GOATvs there is no poll of critics. Every actor is picked or passed over one face-off at a time, by everyone, and the box above shows where the biggest action stars stand today in the world's list of the greatest actors of all time.

The argument most people have is the one from the 1980s: Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Stallone's case starts with a script. He wrote Rocky himself and insisted on playing the lead; the 1976 film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and earned him nominations for both acting and writing. In 1982 First Blood gave him a second hero, John Rambo, and almost forty years after Rocky he was nominated again for playing the same character in Creed (2015).

Schwarzenegger came to Hollywood from bodybuilding, where he had won Mr. Olympia seven times. Conan the Barbarian made him a star in 1982, The Terminator made him an icon in 1984, and Predator, Total Recall and Terminator 2: Judgment Day kept him at the top of the box office for a decade. He also proved he could be funny, in Twins and Kindergarten Cop. Then he left acting for politics and served as governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

The two were open rivals for years, competing over body counts, muscles and box office, before they became friends and business partners. They finally shared the screen in The Expendables in 2010 and as the leads of Escape Plan in 2013.

Long before either of them, Bruce Lee changed what an action film could be. He made only a handful of films as a grown-up star and died in 1973 at 32, weeks before Enter the Dragon was released and turned him into a legend around the world. Jackie Chan, who worked as a stuntman on Lee's films, built his own style out of comedy and danger: he did his own stunts in films like Police Story, broke bones doing them, and received an honorary Academy Award in 2016.

Some of the strongest cases are from other eras. Clint Eastwood was the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's westerns and Dirty Harry in the 1970s, and later won Best Picture and Best Director twice, for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Bruce Willis gave the genre a hero who bleeds in Die Hard (1988). Keanu Reeves had Speed, then The Matrix, then reinvented himself in his fifties with John Wick. Tom Cruise has spent thirty years doing his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible films, from climbing the Burj Khalifa to hanging off a plane at take-off, and Top Gun: Maverick became the biggest hit of his career. Dwayne Johnson, the wrestler who became the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, is the newest name in the argument.

Is the greatest action star the one with the most famous role, the most dangerous stunts or the best films? Pick Schwarzenegger or Stallone above, settle Bruce Lee against Jackie Chan, decide the Rock against Arnold, or see the whole Actors Top 100, ranked by everyone.

Vote: Arnold Schwarzenegger vs Sylvester Stallone

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