In addition to great turns as Claudius (in I*, Claudius*), Claudius (in Hamlet), and Alan Turing, Jacobi was EXCELLENT as, well, me.
I figured Zardoz would be more of an image shatterer, if not his Jeopardy! appearances.
Joaquin Phoenix was so loathesome to me in Gladiator that I can’t see him as anything but a nasty perv.
Malcolm McDowell in Caligula is the same thing. Not to mention the creepy guy in A Clockwork Orange.
Just…:eek:
Benedict Cumberbatch was SO loathsome in Atonement that I avoided all his other roles until Sherlock. He was good in the recent Star Trek but I’m not going to rush out and see him in anything else.
It took me a long time to get over Kim Hunter in the TV movie Bad Ronald. I finally did, after a few viewings of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Planet of the Apes, and plenty of time. I can never, ever watch Bad Ronald again, though.
There’s an actor named Tim Guinee, who “did it” on an episode of Law & Order, and it was a particularly heinous crime, even for L&O. It was the first thing I ever saw him in, and ever since, I’m always suspicious of him when I see him playing a nice guy in anything else. He was just too good in that *L&O *ep.
I’m sure that Glenn Close is a very nice person in real life, but she’s given me the heebie-jeebies ever since Fatal Attraction (1987). I can’t disassociate her from that role.
Steven Moffatt & Mark Gatiss were planning their modern Sherlock Holmes when Moffatt (& his wife) saw Atonement. Cumberbatch’s appearance in that film convinced the Moffatts that he had sufficient “authority” to play Sherlock. Gatiss had already worked with him & thought it a fine idea.
Cumberbatch is a real chameleon & his roles vary widely…
He’s a great actor and I love him (so I’m not really soured on him, per se), but Tim Roth was so loathsome in Rob Roy that I hated him for a bit afterwards. It’s a really outstanding performance, IMO.
I have an irrational dislike for actors who made their bones playing dim witted or retarded characters- like Ashton Kutcher, Matt LeBlanc, Woody Harrelson, etc.
Gave up on Meg Ryan after Sleepless in Seattle. God, what an insipid role in an insipid movie.
… and he was that nice, old Professor Yana in the Doctor Who episode “Utopia”.
Bill Paxton in Big Love. I just can’t see him as anything but a Mormon polygamist anymore.
Batman & Robin soured me on George Clooney for nearly 10 years, I couldn’t get his smirky head-waggly acting method out of my head. I think Syriana was where I started to objectively re-acknowledge that he could be anything but a terrible actor.
SAY IT AIN’T SO!
I apologize for this hijack. You may now resume your regularly scheduled thread.
I’ve posted about him in other threads. When I was in high school James Rebhorn played an awful, awful man who beat his wife and raped his stepdaughter on the CBS soap, Guiding Light. That was in the mid 80s. He’s had over a hundred other credits since then. He hasn’t had any huge starring roles but you’ve probably seen him in a few things. Often he’s played a perfectly benign Deputy Chief, No Nonsense boss, Guy in a suit. But in all these years I have never, not once, seen him on my screen and not thought “Aaaahhh. Bradley Raines!!!”
I might be misinterpreting the intent of the OP. It didn’t make me think he was not a perfectly capable actor. It just inclined me to think that whoever he was playing was going to turn out to be a very bad man. It rarely happened that way.
I watched the whole series of Cadfael, and that just cemented my position. I thought he was horrible.
Paul Reiser in Aliens. I was convinced he would backstab anybody he starred with after that.
Somebody mentioned Gene Hackman earlier. I was so used to him being a heavy, it took me by surprise when Dennis Farina kicked his ass in Get Shorty.
I’d really liked Sandra Bullock when Love Potion #9 came out, so when Jeff Bridges, a super creepy, sadistic killer kidnapped and buried her alive in The Vanishing, it was a long time before I could forgive him and enjoy his acting talents again, this despite the fact I’d though he was great in The Last Picture Show and Thunderbolt & Lightfoot. His only crime really was that he played the part too well. I guess it was The Big Lebowski that finally brought me back into the fold.
David Schwimmer as Ross Geller. Gary Burghoff as Radar O’Reilly. Meryl Streep as Mrs. Kramer, it took me years to enjoy her again, and then mostly in comedies.