who was the best action movie star of the 90's?

JCVD is my favorite Action Movie Star


But Stallone Is Literally The Undisputed King ...

Dwayne Johnson, Liam Neesin, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Jason Statham are the biggest Action Star Lately and Maybe Brad Pitt ,Denzel Washington Mark Walburg and Gerard Butler in certain roles....Angelina Jolie was actually a pretty big action star in The 2000's

Scott Adkins is certainly the king of straight to DVD/BR action movies

Jean Claude Van Damme had a good run in the 1990s... Very much an action star due to the whole martial arts thing... Also, iconic...

No actor is going to rival Arnold or Stalone, no contest to be honest, but JCVD does comes the closest and towers above most other people mentioned in terms of action in the 1990s...

Cruise is probably the best regular-guy-thrust-into-action scenarios... Keanu has the whole enigmatic thing going on as well... Denzel has the swagger..., but none of those guys is pure action the way JCVD is and certainly nowhere near Arnold or Stalone...

The Rock is too comedic, too toothy, too de-sexualised, too eager-to-please and CGI to even rival the regular guys to be honest... None of his action movies seem remotely visceral and seem cartoonish... Somehow he seems less masculine then the actors who are probably less than half his size... very odd

Based on Speed, The Matrix and Point Break, Keanu would easily be a runner up for me in the 90s (as he is now thanks to John Wick). Also, Chow Yun-Fat hands down deserves to be in the conversation if you ask me. On a side note, while I grew up on Arnold and still love his classic movies, to me the most kick ass action guys are those who don't look like they can break you apart but can nevertheless perform (their lethal skills) convincingly on screen and have a great presence overall.

A few other action stars not mentioned to consider for the 90's are Kurt Russell and Harrison Ford. Russell had Tombstone, Stargate, Executive Decision, Escape From L.A., Breakdown and Soldier. Ford had Patriot Games, The Fugitive, Clear and Present Danger, Air Force One, and The Devil's Own.

I would rate the action stars based on the quality of action film, and how many of these good ones they've done, personally, so someone like Seagal may have done more action movies than another star but most of his are mediocre.

Even though the quality of his action films petered out in the last half of the decade I would therefore pick Arnie, as I think Total Recall, T2, True Lies and Last Action Hero are 4 better action films than anyone else has in the decade.

If I was to pick the two best action stars from each it would be something like:

80's - Ford, Arnie
90's - Arnie, Willis
00's - Bale, Cruise
10's - Cruise, Evans