Actors oo aint good

[CaledonianGonzo]

<Sits and waits for James Thingray to mention ROGER MOORE>

On the subject of Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt is another of his worthy recent(ish) turns.

Turning to telly, the fact that John Thaw continued to get work throughout his entire life was a constant source of bafflement to me.

[Jemble Fred]

Turning to telly, the fact that John Thaw continued to get work throughout his entire life was a constant source of bafflement to me.

Watch the BBC King John, with Leonard Rossiter in the main role – Thaw's great in that. They both are in fact; shame they didn't do more Shakespeare.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

If we're talking about actresses I think Kate Winslet sucks in everything apart from Heavenly Creatures (in which she plays a posh, mad, theatrical girl.)

[gmoney]

I'm no Kate Winslet fan, but she pulls out a very good performance in Little Children. I agree with who ever said Nicole Kidman, I can't stand to watch her in anything.

[boxofslice]

If we're talking about actresses I think Kate Winslet sucks in everything apart from Heavenly Creatures (in which she plays a posh, mad, theatrical girl.)

Yeah, apart from that film I've been unmoved by anything else she's acted in. 

Kiera Knightley is another one whose continued work is of some bemusement to me.

[Phil_A]

The continued career of Gerard Butler is a bit baffling. It seems that "300" was the entire extent of his acting range, and now he's just sleepwalking through a series of unmemorable performances in forgettable nonsense like "Gamer" and "The Bounty Hunter." I mean, you'd think in three years he would've been in at least one other notable film?

[Ignatius_S]

.... Apart from in  "The Offence", I'll give you that one.

And The Hill. Oh, and Hell Drivers. On The Fiddle, too.

[boxofslice]

And The Hill. Oh, and Hell Drivers. On The Fiddle, too.

The Man Who Would Be King, Caine and Connery both.

[Marty McFly]

And Spacey does play something other than his usual self in 'Telstar'.

He's only in it for about ten minutes, it's hardly a big stretch. Did like his barking military orders at musicians, mind.

He does have a nice moustache too

[Ja'moke]

If we're talking about actresses I think Kate Winslet sucks in everything apart from Heavenly Creatures (in which she plays a posh, mad, theatrical girl.)

What about Eternal Sunshine? I think she's fantastic in that, although it is my favourite film, so perhaps I over praise her performance.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

She's the major problem with Eternal Sunshine I think. It's hard to care whether or not Jimbo Carrey gets together with someone that annoying.

Actually the first time I saw it I thought Gondry and Kaufman had been very clever in writing/casting the Winslet character. I thought they'd made her incredibly irritating to point out why the relationship will never work, and she's one of those girls you fall in love with but just drives you to distraction.

Then I thought about it some more and thought nah - Winslet's just annoying.

[Jake Thingray]

<Sits and waits for James Thingray to mention ROGER MOORE>

Who exactly is James Thingray?

At the risk of being hypocritical, while I remain bewildered by silly, Tory-voting fanboys elevating Moore above his true worth, when I was in his presence earlier this year he was wholly pleasant, and referred to me as "my friend over there" as I'd asked so many questions relating to his career.


For this thread, I would suggest an annoying little man called Arthur Malet, who spoke in a strange accent that was neither recognisably British nor wholly American, and had the sort of fussy manner that tries to give an instant impression of good character acting, rather than gradually accumulating details.

[Jake Thingray]

Kiera Knightley is another one whose continued work is of some bemusement to me.

Alarmingly perhaps, I genuinely found myself in agreement with the film critic of THE OLDIE, that Knightley's acting range is slightly narrower than her shoulderblades. Not only do none of the current posh British gels interest me in their acting, frankly I don't even fancy any of them. In future decades, they'll be as forgotten as Samantha Eggar, Sarah Miles, Lesley-Anne Down or Rachel Ward are now.

[Tiny Poster]

Liam Neeson. Irish cardboard.

[kidsick5000]

Liam Neeson. Irish cardboard.

Yet wonderful to watch him beat people up.

There's a bit of a mix here between can't act and stuck on repeat.
The repeaters, in their defence can't always help it. They get famous for a particular kind of role, then quite often that's what they're asked and crucially paid to do for a long time after.

As for bad actors, even they can have a blip of prowess. Like Hayden Christiensen in Shattered Glass.

Happened to watch Outbreak the other night. That was a strange case of actors clearly giving up on even trying to act. Donald Sutherland and Dustin Hoffman just letting the words fall out their mouths in no particular purpose.

[Pedro_Bear]

lolopinionthread.jpg

Michael Caine can't act? Really? Marlon Brando changed cinema with his expressionism. Jack Nicholson may play gloriously to the gallery, but it isn't a static performance, far from it, his range was staggering at his peak. Both Pitt and DiCaprio are bloody good character actors who got clipped early into their careers by being cast as romantic leads, and both have moved mountians to escape this transient fate. Spacey has recovered from over-exposure and remains a great screen presence.

Kate Beckinsale has a really lousy agent. Angelina Jolie has a really good publicist, although given a decent role she can act. It's very different for women on screen, the acting roles still aren't forthcoming, so they specialise in the stereotyping demanded of them.

And Keanu Reeves is a bro.[nb]

The more us s/a/d lusers found out about his life during the sadkeanu.jpg meme, the more and more we concluded that he was a total bro. He was totally charming in replying personally to the lunatic emails we flooded him with, too. Very self depricating and he displayed a very keen sense of humour, picking up on in-jokes at his expense and rolling with them. He has very good taste in anime, to boot.

[/nb] He's extremely good at embodying the sci-fi everyman, and he breathes life into very generic roles and scenarios in much the same way John Cusack holds attention in more contemporary settings. We give a damn about their characters despite the often ludicrous, nonsensical goings on around them. Some early career misses aside - driven mainly by the Hollywood insistence at the time that he play romantic leads - he is very appropriate for the roles he chooses. And he was great in comic-fan bating, awful good Constantine too.[nb]... given that we weren't going to accept a yankified John Constantine without crying about it anyway, a fact that he clearly took note of what with being a fan of the character himself, and played the role thematically rather than literally.[/nb]


Truly awful actors inspire no connection with the audience, and this is as subjective as the films we choose to go see. The lack of cinematic diversity in the last two decades or so, driven by the demographic profiling of audiences for maximum short-term profit, has indeed produced some truly lousy performances. It is directly responsible for the sort of typecasting that shackled Pitt and DiCaprio, and made stars of dickheads like Hugh Grant. That the mainstream vehicles homogonise performances such that really good actors appear to be sleepwalking next to the prettyboy chancers isn't so much a reflection of talent as it is marketing.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I agree with you on Reeves but couldn't disagree more about Constantine. I couldn't give a shit about the comic but that film was atrocious and Keanu Reeves unfortunately deserves some of the blame.

[Doomy Dwyer]

Harrison Ford. Apart from 'Bladerunner' where his deadpan, monochrome drone fits like a glove. And the Indy films where he's playing a two dimensional cartoon character. So I suppose he'd have to get a pass for the Star Wars films too, for the same reason. But apart from those notable exceptions, he's very dull indeed.   

[Emma Raducanu]

I was surprised to see that Hayley Joel Osment, rather than develop as an actor has actually regressed making is turn as Forrest Gump look like an Oscar winning performance.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Yeah, fuck Harrison Ford that boring monochrome droning very charismatic nice man.

Actually, he's fucked as an actor these days because he's lost all his features behind his craggy old face.

[non capisco]

Harrison Ford. Apart from 'Bladerunner' where his deadpan, monochrome drone fits like a glove. And the Indy films where he's playing a two dimensional cartoon character. So I suppose he'd have to get a pass for the Star Wars films too, for the same reason. But apart from those notable exceptions, he's very dull indeed.

This is one I kind of reluctantly yet completely agree with. 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' is still pretty much push comes to shove my favourite film and Indiana Jones in that one film my favourite cinema character due to a heady mix of childhood nostalgia and Harrison Ford getting the Bogart meets Buster Crabbe thing they were going for exactly right. (The bit where he thinks Marion's dead and he's getting pissed up with that monkey and being the weary fatalist, I didn't understand much about life when I was 8 but I still thought at that point Indiana Jones was the coolest man in all of fiction). I love Ford as Indiana Jones in 'Raiders' so much I want him to be better in other things but there's pretty slim pickings aside from Blade Runner and Witness at a push. (To be fair, I still haven't seen The Mosquito Coast which is often cited as his best performance). He was my childhood idol as Indy and Han Solo yet as an adult watching him in anything  you have the creeping and unwelcome sense that he's quite a poor actor, functional at best.

[Doomy Dwyer]

I quite liked him in 'Witness' too come to think of it. But apart from that, Bladerunner, the Indiana Jones films, the Star Wars films and his small role in Apocalypse Now, I'd say he's fairly poor. He hasn't made a decent film in twenty years. And he looks a right cunt with that earring.

[Doomy Dwyer]

I'm not including the newest Indy film in the above list of exceptions. I haven't seen it, but it's shit.

[AsparagusTrevor]

That's correct. You haven't seen it, and it is shit.

[non capisco]

I'm not including the newest Indy film in the above list of exceptions. I haven't seen it, but it's shit.

I quite liked the bit in the nuclear village towards the start, it seemed like they were semi-successfully bringing the character into the 1950s. Then Shia La fuckingBeouf shows up in his 'Wild Ones' hat. The whole thing's arguably no worse than Temple Of Doom though.

[Icehaven]

Andie MacFUCKINGDowell.  She can't even convincingly play herself.

Absolutely. The surest case of someone's 'kid' or offspring (considering her age) getting work because they're someone's kid.

[Custard]

Liam Neeson. Irish cardboard.

I dunno, he was SPECTACULAR in his role as the dog in Fallout 3, i'll have you know.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Angelina Jolie has a really good publicist,

Angelina Jolie doesn't have a publicist.

Less snidely - I've always thought Keanu Reeves was perfectly good  -perhaps even great - for the roles he plays, which he chooses very carefully. Apart from in Dracula, but bless him for trying. Leonardo di Caprio seems to be sinking into the American trap of thinking the only way to be a great actor is to show INTENSE PAIN. I enjoyed Inception pretty much, but he seemed to have exactly the same facial range in that as my 7 week old son does. FACE !: incomprehension. FACE 2: screwed up agony of doing A BIG POO. A shame, since he was great in Gilbert Grape.

Great actors rarely = film star, as they have a weird blankness to them, like Raphe Fiennes. Johnny Depp seems to be pulling it off, be realising you basically have to do pantomine to get by.

[phantom_power]

jonathan rhys-meyers is awful  and annoying in everything i have seen him in.

and actors like kate winslett  and liam neeson clearly can act. you might find them annoying or not like their style but they are not BAD actors

[Pepotamo1985]

Without him, Fight Club may as well not exist.

In the interests of shoving this thread further down the road of inconsequential opinion tennis, I'd just like to say I couldn't disagree more, and he nearly ruins the whole movie for me, on the basis that he's not even remotely believeable. Almost every line of his in the first three quarters of the film, each one intended to be a cool, deeply philosophical yet spontaneous aside, sounds hopelessly contrived - and his general attempts to act cool up to the narrator's revelation are fucking cringe. This said, when he becomes all psychotic, he's pretty good. I really like Fight Club, but that's more to do with the great cinematography and Ed Norton acting his little heart out like there's no tomorrow. I generally think Pitt is a bit crap, but he does a good turn now and then.

Spacey's a good one, because the one character he invariably plays, to varying degress - feeble, disarmingly polite and soft voiced yet unhinged - is just a bit cack. I don't buy him in Seven as the serial killer (he's nowhere near intense enough - and, by extension, I like Pitt in that film until 'whatzindaboxxxx????', which is embarassing for everyone involved), for instance, and his turn in American Beauty (another bizarrely overrated late 20th century flick elevated to ludicrous parapets - it's so shit) is just a bit rubbish, he exudes no intensity nor emotional resonance whatsoever. This said, he MAKES The Usual Suspects, so, as someone pointed out previously, he's more than capable of demonstrating exactly why he continues to get work. He seems like a nice bloke too, although that's irrelevant.

As I mentioned in a thread in Comedy Chat, I'm in a constant state of amazement that Tim Roth has a career at all, he's painfully rubbish in everything I've seen him in (I'd go as far as to say he ruins Reservoir Dogs for me, as the film almost entirely consists of him screeching in a terrible American accent, covered in blood, but I don't really like that film anyway). Has he ever done anything good?