A few thoughts that popped in my head. (in ranking order)
Christoph Waltz
Oleg Taktarov
Daniel Day-Lewis
Viggo Mortenson
Ralph Fiennes
Michael Douglas
Possibly Al Pacino?
any other thoughts?
RIP Dennis Hopper 1936-2010. The last class-act of hollywood.
You listed a few fine choices, especially Waltz and Fiennes.
However my choices are Kenneth Branagh or Daniel Craig
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Good look and a genuine Russian which is key for plausibility.
shareAnton Yelchin.
" You need to rip him a new one, your Honor. "
Oleg Taktarov, yes please! :)
Also Daniel Day-Lewis would be cool.
Key to getting a good Russian character in a movie is finding and actor who is willing to go to Russia and try to understand what they're about to get a true sense of what they're like. Because in reality they are quite different then what most "outsiders" imagine them to be like. This is quite difficult to get an actor to cast aside his assumptions, learn a language, and deal with a lot of foreign people.
A successful example of this would be Mickey Rourke for Iron Man 2. Crappy accent, maybe shallow dialogue, but he "got" the essence of the Russian mentality, at least of a certain type of Russian.
Capturing the essence of a chess master from the Soviet Union would probably be very difficult to do correctly at least from a foreigners perspective.
Spassky was only 35 when Fischer challenged him for the title. Most of the actors suggested here are too old except maybe Daniel Craig. I'm thinking Michael Fassbender or possibly Christian Bale.
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