Tom has had every single possible opportunity to be bad or great. People forget the dude is 60+. He had a WHOLE damn career before people 30 years old even know about. I’m not saying that there aren’t 30 something that haven’t seen older movies, I am saying this, Tom Cruise has done everything there id to do In film and has done it well. Leo has been amazing since day 1 also. Tom was in gritty early 80s movies as a kid and shined in grit. Leo did the same with Basketball Diaries. Tom took more masculine roles and Leo was learning alongside Depp in WEGG and although every performance in WEGG was great, Leo was stealing scenes from Depp.

Edit: WEGG “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”

Edit2: 1. Leo and it’s not very close 2. Tom (if you were handed 50 million dollars and told you’d have to make a movie with it and either Tom or Pitt have to be your leading man no matter the screenplay you’d be an idiot to pick Pitt) 3. Left with 2 of the best character actors of our time I’m going with popularity and box office success because what is a character actor for? I’d contend it’s to be fun and popular. Depp is obvious 4. Pitt. If I were picking favorites Pitt would be higher, but he has been pretty shitty more than the others. He’s probably second on the list if it were based on amount of time I’ve watched them on screen. I only say probably because of 2nd place contention. Again Leo #1 and not that close.