Rank the greatest British film performances of all time — whose acting genuinely floored you?

Day-Lewis's commitment to playing the Irish writer and painter with cerebral palsy redefined method acting and earned him his first Oscar. Decades on, it remains a benchmark few have matched.

As the repressed butler Stevens, Hopkins conveys a lifetime of unspoken feeling with the smallest of glances. It's a masterclass in saying everything by saying nothing.

Dench turns a lonely schoolteacher into one of cinema's most unsettling figures. Every diary entry voiceover lands like a knife.

Oldman's hushed, watchful turn as the veteran spymaster is all coiled intelligence and weary patience. He carries the entire Cold War in a pair of spectacles.

Colman's Oscar-winning performance is by turns hilarious, pitiful and terrifying. She makes a fragile monarch feel painfully, recognisably human.