Tom Hanks. What was the last movie he was in that you actually wanted to see? He had a few huge hits in the 90’s (Apollo 13 and FG for 2) and since then is always touted as a big movie star but he hasn’t starred in anything worthwhile in forever. A League of Their Own and That Thing You do were good movies I suppose.
Harrison Ford. Another untouchable. Except he hasn’t been in a really good movie in 15+ years. Yet he is still pushed as a “star” and top shelfer in Hollywood.
Deniro. He needs to stop making movies before people stop remembering him for Taxi Driver and Goodfellas and start remembering him for Meet the Fockers 5. Nuff said there.
Bruce Willis. Not making a huge impact anywhere but not totally in the toilet. He doesn’t measure up to his previous star-power though.
Al Pacino is a caricature of himself, and has been for a long time now. He was in some good movies in the 70s and 80s, but since the 90s has been “the guy who shouts at random times while reciting his lines and goes Hooah!”.
I wouldn’t say Hanks “hasn’t starred in anything worthwhile in forever” - since the two movies you mention, he’s been in some pretty notable movies (either from a box office gross, or quality standard, or both in most cases):
[ul] Saving Private Ryan(!) - 1998
[li]Cast Away - 2000[/li][li]Road to Perdition - 2002[/li][li]Catch Me If You Can - 2002[/li][li]The Ladykillers - 2004 (I don’t care what anyone says, this was an awesome movie - being one of the Coen Brothers “worst” movies still puts it heads and shoulders above most films)[/li][li]Charlie Wilson’s War - 2007[/li][li]not to mention the Toy Story movies, which were all superb (the last of which grossed a cool $1b).[/li][/ul]
Then there are his production efforts - he’s been a strong guiding force as exec producer in several movie and TV projects, including Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Big Love, and John Adams, all for HBO. And he still finds the time to star in SNL occasionally.
So I’d say if anything his career has gotten better over the last 15 years or so.
I do agree that DeNiro has picked utter crap lately, ditto for Ford. But Willis gets a pass just for the Die Hard series - if he can make a kickass action film every decade or so, I have no problem if he does paycheck projects the rest of the time. It’s not like he ever claimed to be a high-art thespian anyway.
Quite literally (1:28). These days I think he just phones it in to movies for the paycheck; his love is theater (currently the Oscar Wilde play Salome).
John Travolta: Mega-Star in the late '70s/early '80s, then self-imposed exile for a few years, Mega-Star post Pulp Fiction, then for years mostly forgettable comedies and a truly memorable-but-not-in-a-good-way performance in Hairspray.
Maybe Cuba Gooding, Jr.? He won an academy award for Jerry Maguire, enjoyed maybe a year or so of attention, and then dropped off the face of the world after the embarrassing Radio. Looking at his Wikipedia page, it looks like 9 out of 10 of his past films have been direct-to-video.
Johnny Depp seems to have staying power. He’s in his late 40s and while some of his movies are total crap critically they’ve brought in gazillions and he still shoots out a great performance every so often.
Circa Heathers, Christian Slater was supposed to be the second coming of Nicholson, but after a few decent movies, he started picking utter crap to star in.
Speaking of, what decent movies has Winona Ryder been in lately aside from Star Trek?
And how in the hell did we get this far into the thread without Robin Williams being mentioned?
Johnny Depp is a great example of the OP, actually.
A lot of his movies lately have been complete trash. Public Enemies was stupid, trite shit. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a total fucking mess, his Wonka totally inferior to the original Gene Wilder version; the film was dependent on CGI and visual flash and yet it still managed to be less visually interesting than the physical backdrops used in the first film. The Pirates series is getting played out. Alice in Wonderland is also widely regarded as a horrible movie, also overdependent on CGI, that did not in any way improve on any of the many pre-existing adaptations of Carroll’s story.
His latest “role” is a talking lizard in a CGI kids’ movie.
I would say that far from a great luminary of today’s cinema, Johnny Depp is actually a pretty egregious hack. He peaked with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Um, oh yeah, before you whip out the treacherous roll eyes smiley, please go make nicey-nice with IMDB or Wikipedia.
ETA: On review, I see your link was from IMDB. So very, very close…