Michael Crawford

As a skinny, big-toothed English actor, Michael Crawford played a nervous goof in such defining '60s movies as The Knack...And How to Get It and Hello, Dolly. Once the bloom fell off the flower-power era, he graduated to English TV, slowly beefing up his body mass over the years. By 1988, all of his geeky charm was gone and he landed the starring role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. Crawford has been a singer since childhood, and his old-world style compares to Mandy Patinkin's; neither overtly theatrical or jazzy, he has a pure, casual tone. While housewives the world over have flocked to his recordings, we miss the hapless, loose limbed star of British New Wave cinema.