The Real Stars of the Silver Screen: Ultimate Action Hero

From Sly Stallone to Arnie, and in more recent years the likes of Tom Cruise and Jason Statham, the number of Hollywood action heroes is seemingly endless - just like their supply of ammunition. But who is the ultimate?

Which actor has saved more lives, thrown more punches and cheated death more than any other? Which star really does have the right to shout “Yippee ki yay”, “I’ll be back” or any other corny action phrase?

Enter, The Real Stars of the Silver Screen: Ultimate Action Hero…

We’ve analysed the five biggest action films from 10 of the most popular action heroes on the planet, charting every punch thrown, every high-speed chase and every villain defeated, and placed them into our unique algorithm.

Each action star is then given a Hero Rank based upon their performances across the genre to uncover once and for all who is the greatest action hero of all time.

Ranking factors - 100% Total

  • Box Office Takings12%
  • Rotten Tomatoes Score12%
  • Punches / hits thrown11%
  • Bad guys killed or knocked unconscious11%
  • No. of fast cars driven11%
  • Count of weapons used11%
  • No. of hits received11%
  • No. of times they’ve cheated death11%
  • No. of catchphrases used11%
Actor
Total score
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Deep Dive Into The Action

Take a deeper look into where the action lies, with our full breakdown of each movie studied. Uncover the films where Chuck Norris has thrown the most punches, the movie in which Tom Cruise has most cheated death, and of course, the movie where Arnie bellows “Hasta la vista…baby!” the most.

Toggle between the action statistics and box office reception to discover all you need to know about each actor’s top five movies.

Action statistics
Box office & critical reception

Select the actor you wish to explore to unlock the full statistics of each film analysed within this study.

Actor/Movie
Punches / hits thrown
Bad guys killed / knocked unconscious
Fast vehicles driven
Weapons used
Catchphrases used
No. of hits received
No. of times they've cheated death
Box Office (inflation)
Rotten Tomatoes (Critics)
Rotten Tomatoes (Users)
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