James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor and dancer. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. He won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances.
Cagney is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy, Taxi!, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, City for Conquest and White Heat, finding himself typecast or limited by this reputation earlier in his career. He was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described him as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".
In his first professional acting performance in 1919, Cagney was costumed as a woman when he danced in the chorus line of the revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925.