Paul Walker’s 10 Best Performances, Ranked

Paul Walker is one of the most beloved actors of our time. The reactions of fans all over the world upon hearing of his untimely and tragic death in 2013 was overwhelming. He’s best-known for his role as Brian O’Conner in The Fast and the Furious franchise, but there are several other movies on his resumé worth mentioning.

Paul Walker was a versatile actor, capable of performances ranging from dramatic to comedic, and we wished we could have seen him in more films. He always made us laugh or cry or both. That said, here are 10 of Paul Walker’s best performances, ranked.

10 Into The Blue

Walker plays diver Jared, who lives in the Bahamas with his girlfriend. His dream is to find a sunken pirate or merchant ship filled with treasure. He does eventually find said treasure, but it comes at a cost. From run-ins with drug lords to the death of a friend by shark, Jared involuntarily becomes mixed up in a world of hurt and crime where treasure hunting is deadlier than need be.

Jared was intense but also light-hearted, a testament to Walker’s ability to deliver even performances.

9 Flags Of Our Fathers

Flags of Our Fathers was a war film that covered the 1945 battle of Iwo Jima. Specifically, the five Marines and the one Navy corpsman that were a part of raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and what that event meant, especially regarding the aftereffects that those six men felt for the remainder of their lives. Walker played Sergeant Hank Hansen, who was a part of the first flag raising but wound up misidentified as Harlon Block.

The fact that Walker found his way into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood is impressive, and the film depicted a good story, based on a book of the same name, so we can see why Walker would’ve been interested in the part.

8 The Lazarus Project

Want to see Walker in a thriller film? Look no further than The Lazarus Project. Walker stars as Ben Garvey, a reformed criminal that lands back in prison, this time with a death sentence, after a heist gone wrong that leaves his brother and two others dead.

He says his goodbyes to his wife and daughter, but instead of receiving the lethal injection, he finds himself working at a psychiatric hospital instead. He wants to go home, but it isn’t that simple. Has he been given a second chance by God, or is there something more sinister at work?

7 She’s All That

Remember the time Paul Walker played the bad guy in 1990s teen movie She’s All That? Dean (Walker) challenges his friend Zack (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) to turn any random girl in their school into a Prom Queen within six weeks, and he selects Laney (Rachel Leigh Cook) as Zack’s subject. Dean is later the one to tell Laney about the bet, which causes a temporary rift between her and Zack just when they’d begun falling for one another.

Dean later tries to seduce Laney, until he’s thwarted thanks to her using an air horn to render him practically deaf. Walker as a teenage villain is an interesting role, and he played it well.

6 Tammy And The T-Rex

This 1994 movie is campy, bloody, and downright strange, but it has its moments. Tammy (Denise Richards) and Michael (Paul Walker) are the ideal high school couple as cheerleader and jock. They’re abruptly separated, however, when thanks to Tammy’s jealous ex, Michael wounds up mauled by a lion. A crazed doctor declares Michael dead so as to use his brain as part of an experiment, in which Michael’s brain is transplanted into a robot Tyrannosaurus.

Michael wreaks havoc as revenge drives his anger with his new body, and Tammy figures out who he really is, deciding to help Michael find a new body as his old one is beyond repair. Love comes in all forms, but this is definitely one of the weirdest love stories.

5 Joy Ride

Lewis Thomas (Walker) has the worst road trip of his life in Joy Ride. He decides to drive home for the summer, and offers to pick up his childhood friend and crush, Venna (Leelee Sobieski) on the way back. Starting in California, he stops in Utah to bail out his black-sheep brother Fuller (Steve Zahn). Fuller installs a CB radio, and the two begin listening in on truckers, with Fuller talking Lewis into playing a prank on one of them.

Turns out ‘Rusty Nail’ doesn’t like being pranked, and Lewis, Fuller and later Venna fight for their lives as Rusty Nail pursues them. Over and out.

4 Eight Below

In the early ’90s, Jerry Shepard (Walker) is a guide at an Antarctica research base. A UCLA professor arrives at the base and pushes Shepard to take him to Mount Melbourne to find a rare meteorite from Mercury. The trip goes badly, with the professor injured. Shepard and the professor are rescued, forced to leave the dogs behind. Shepard, believing the pilot will return within days for the dogs, ties them up securely.

Unfortunately, it’s months before Shepard can return, and he spends that time trying to fund an expedition to retrieve them, something that the professor actually contributes to. We get to see how the dogs survive the conditions and the loss of two of their own, and the joyful reunion between Jerry and the remaining six. It’s a heart-wrenching movie that can be stressful but does contain a happy ending.

3 The Fast And The Furious

Brian O’Conner (Walker) is an undercover LAPD cop whose job is to find a crew of hijackers that are connected to the street racing world. The trouble is, Brian becomes friends with Dom (Vin Diesel) and the rest of the crew, and even falls for Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster). His friendship with Dom and the crew, and budding romance with Mia clouds his judgment and he doesn’t initially believe the evidence that’s in front of him, but he does manage to save the day before Vince (Matt Schulze) is killed by a shotgun-wielding trucker.

He even lets Dom go after narrowly being hit by a train, because Brian did owe him a “ten-second car.” Fast cars and action fueled this 2001 hit, and it’s one of our favorite Paul Walker films.

2 Hours

Hours features Paul Walker as Nolan Hayes, a new father that loses his wife due to childbirth in 2005 just before Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans. Nolan is left to his own devices to keep his newborn daughter alive in a ventilator after everyone, including doctors and nurses, are evacuated. When the power goes out, Nolan has to use a hand-cranked generator to keep the ventilator running, all the while fighting off looters, trying to find help, and struggling to keep himself awake.

With all the obstacles against him, Nolan relies on illusions of his wife and his love for his daughter to keep him going, until help finally does arrive. It’s a touching story about love and the will to survive despite everything going wrong, and Walker’s performance was strong, on-point and incredible.

1 Fast & Furious 7

The last film of The Fast and the Furious franchise to feature Brian O’Conner, we had to include it on this list. Fast 7 was a good way to say goodbye to Paul, as his character goes on one last mission to save a hacker and take down Shaw for killing one of their own before settling down into a normal life with Mia and their children

. The touching final moments in which there is a flashback to moments with Brian, and how he and Dom say goodbye to one another before driving off in different directions are symbolistic. Like Dom says, “it’s never goodbye.”

About The Author

Kacie Lillejord
(373 Articles Published)

A Seattle native, Kacie has loved entertainment in the forms of books, films, television and music since day one. Inspired by a filmmaker relative, Kacie has been pursuing a career in the film and television industry in Los Angeles ever since. A graduate of The University of Arizona, Kacie has written for her college newspaper The Daily Wildcat, Harness Magazine, 25YL, and now has added Screen Rant to her resume. She loves writing and all things pop culture.

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