The wonderful folks who gave us
The Oracle of Bacon (
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/index.html) have used their
cunning and
statistical genius (not to mention a good slice of
IMDB querying) to produce a list of the people who are most connected to the rest of the actor and actress population. By
connected, they mean having
starred in
films with X, or starrred in films
with people who starred in films with X, or starred in films
with people who starred in films with
people who starred in films with X etc.
So, without further ado, I give you The Center of the Hollywood Universe:
The rest of the top 10 looks like so:
2: Steiger, Rod
3: Pleasence, Donald
4: Heston, Charlton
5: Sutherland, Donald
6: Quinn, Anthony
7: Mitchum, Robert
8: Winters, Shelley
9: Welles, Orson
10: Hopper, Dennis
A really interesting list. If you are still confused about how this list is compiled or want to find out who the 1000 best Centres of the Hollywood Universe are, I suggest you check out the very cool Virginia Centre of the Hollywood Universe pages at: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/center.html
Editor's note: The actual list of the 1,000 names who feature in 'The Center of the Hollywood Universe' can be found at http://oracleofbacon.org/center_list.html. Since the above was posted the order has changed and Rod Steiger now features as Number One.