What actor or actress has, in your opinion, the most solid filmography? With “solid” I mean the one who has the best ratio of quality movies in relation to the amount of movies the person is starring in. This is highly subjective of course.
I’d say Harold Russell has to be near the top of the list. Four films with two Oscar wins (for the same role) and a Golden Globe.
If we’re talking movies only, not TV, I think James Dean deserves a mention. But just on a technicality, I guess.
So true.
That’s who I was gonna say.
Johnny Depp chooses his roles pretty carefully. (Compare him to Oscar winners Nicholas Cage and Michael Cain, frinstance.) Ditto Christian Bale and Chloe Sevigny. That’s all I got for now, but others may occur to me.
(Again on a technicality, the single definitive answer to this question is probably Maria Falconetti.)
Chloe “The Brown Bunny” Sevigny? Really? I guess, but that never would have popped into my mind.
Even if you agree that it’s a bad movie (have you actually seen it?), that’s one.
Now there’s a man who knew to get out while he was on top. No We’re No Angles or The Devil’s Advocate for him.
As a tangent, I’ve had this idea for a comedy sketch in which Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman stand around in a bar and boast about the progressively shittier films they’ve saved just by appearing in them:
“Remember Runaway Jury? Without me, John Cusack would have been cashing his last paycheck.”
“Yeah, we’ll that’s nothing. I prevented Keanu Reeves from ending up living in an underpass after Chain Reaction.”
“Big fucking deal; I kept Jim Belushi from falling on his face in Mr. Destiny.”
“Wow, that’s…wait, weren’t you in that film directed by Steven Seagal?”
“Shut your bloody mouth, Hack-Man! I bought a small South Pacific nation with my salary from that.”
“Hey, look, it’s Christopher Walken!”
“Hey, guys. I just…personally…saved the careers…of every cast member…on Saturday Night Live…by making cameos…in their ill-advised…and poorly written…feature film vehicles. Can I have…a Chivas…on the rocks?”
Stranger
Hey, the Devil’s Advocate is a great movie! It’s my favorite Pacino movie ever.
Alec Guinness. I don’t see one notable stinker on his IMDB filmography, in contrast to his great contemporaries like Burton, O’Toole, Olivier, etc who at some point all gave crappy performances in crappy films. I’ll even be charitable and overlook Star Wars. :eek:
Nah, he does better scenery chewing in Heat: “I’m angry. I’m very angry, Ralph. You know, you can ball my wife if she wants you to. You can lounge around here on her sofa, in her ex-husband’s dead-tech, post-modernistic bullshit house if you want to. But you do not…get to watch…my…fucking television set!”
Pacino has whored himself out for some real crap, though. But hey, once you’ve been in half a dozen or so of some of the best films ever made (and taking a pittance for them), you can be excused for wanting to insulate your house with stacks of $100 bills. Jack Nicholson, though…that’s a real shame, there.
Stranger
Stranger On A Train writes:
> . . . We’re No Angles . . .
Now there’s a film I’d like to see. A bunch of guys sitting around saying, “You know, we’re never right. We’re never acute either. We’re not obtuse though. I guess that means we’re no angles.”
Haha, me too, actually. Maybe I’m a total dork (maybe?!) but this made me laugh out loud.
Morgan Freeman has a pretty impressive list:
Brubaker
Glory
An Unfinished Life
Batman Begins
The Unforgiven
Gone Baby Gone
Million Dollar Baby
The Shawshank Redemption
Amistad
Se7en
Driving Miss Daisy
Deep Impact
…among others. Even his clunkers are decent movies. (Evan Almighty excepted.) He does a really good job of selecting scripts, I think.
In his defense, I think he has had a decent direction of his line of work the past ten years or so. Okay, Something’s Gotta Give is not the best movie ever, but Jack practically outperforms everybody else in it so at least he’s not to blame. But more importantly, As Good as it Gets and About Schmidt are both understated and fit him well.
Stipulating that nobody will come close to John Cazale, I would nominate Brad Pitt. His signal to noise ratio is at or approaching Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp.
Two other names for consideration for similar reasons to each other, and just because I like categorizing them together in a single sentence, are Daniel Day-Lewis and Chris Tucker.
Wow. That’s a hard lineup to beat, unless someone else can get him on volume.