Acting role that soured you on an actor

[nearwildheaven]

@kayaker

Kevin Bacon convincingly portrayed a pedophile in 2004’s The Woodsman. Every time I’ve seen him since, I can’t help being repulsed and thinking him a sick fuck.

He played a drag queen in “JFK”.

[Evil_Captor]

Wiliam Hurt as the dad in the “Lost in Space” movie. It was a dreadful movie, but the problem was I head read in a review somewhere that Hurt always looked like a man who was struggling not to fall asleep – literally on the verge of nodding off in the middle of whatever he was doing or saying. I had never particularly noticed this in, say “Dune” or “Body Heat” but in “Lost in Space” it was REALLY evident. Ever since, when I see him, I keep thinking, 'Wake up, William! Wake up! C’mon, get those eyes open! You can do it!" Pulls me right out of the movie …

[a35362]

William Hurt wasn’t in Dune.

[armedmonkey]

@a35362

William Hurt wasn’t in Dune.

Think the 2000 miniseries, not the 1984 movie.

[a35362]

Oh! I had no idea. He was in every OTHER movie in the '80s.

[nearwildheaven]

In the early 1980s, Ted Danson played a child molester in a TV movie called “Something About Amelia”. I’ve never been able to see him any other way since.

[a35362]

INCEST – his own daughter. Yeah, I hear ya. :eek:

[4d3fect]

Everything I’ve seen Jonah Hill in. He just strikes me as insincere.

[actualliberalnotoneofthose]

@gwendee

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.

James Rebhorn passed away recently. I saw him in a lot of things- he was one of those “that guy” actors. I was very familiar with the name because one of my friends went to the same college and I guess he was one of the more notable alumni. I will always see him as the actor he played in “The Game”- not that it soured me on him.

I was going to say that a lot of actors seem to get their starts on soaps as rapists/murders and other bad guys. Some of them end up basically rehabilitated as the same character in the same role, often marrying and/or even mentoring the victims of the rape/abuse. Then you always have the guys (and women) who murder/rape someone then end-up sleeping with their whole family, marrying their step-children, finding out their dad isn’t really the dad and falling in love with him, and so on.

A couple I can think of probably aren’t the best examples, because I don’t know that they’ve ever done anything likable. For example, I remember Eddie Cibrian raping a girl on the Young and The Restless. He’s always looked like a smug rapey guy to me, but I don’t know if it’s because of the role. Then there’s that lawyer on that show (haven’t seen him anywhere else, though) who I thought was a convicted rapist but according to Wikipedia he was only a serial sexual harasser and attempted rapist…and now apparently he’s the DA.

[Jackmannii]

@cher3

I’ve had trouble warming up to Meryl Streep since I watched The Devil Wears Prada. She was too good at being a hard-ass.

I basically couldn’t tolerate Streep after “Kramer vs. Kramer”.

[aceplace57]

Clint Eastwood in Firefox. He directed it too. It revealed how limited of an actor he is. The role called for a captured pilot to show fear in captivity. Let’s just say Clint should have stuck with orangutans.

[Indyellen]

I haven’t been able to watch Vincent D’Onofrio in anything (except Men In Black) since I saw him in The Cell. That was the first thing I ever watched with him and now I just get really uncomfortable watching anything else he does.

[Baker]

This thread, in which folks are speaking of how they relate to actors and their roles, reminds me of something I heard at a science fiction convention in Oklahoma City.

One of the guests of honor was the late Richard Biggs. He had played the role of Dr. Stephen Franklin on Babylon 5. In his speech he mentioned that he’d also played a doctor on a soap opera.

The public at large, he said, thought scifi fans to be a bit strange, but he said soap fans were the ones not grounded in reality. If they didn’t like your character they didn’t like you, the actor either. But in scifi you could play a badass character and a scifi fan would just tell you what a great job you’d done in the role.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Bozuit

Not in Game of Thrones?

I didn’t have cable for 2 years, and currently only have basic, so no GoT for me. Didn’t even know Gorman was in it until I googled him to remind myself the name of his DKR character. (He played the assistant of the guy Bane was supposedly working for at the start of the movie.)

[Superdude]

@Baker

This thread, in which folks are speaking of how they relate to actors and their roles, reminds me of something I heard at a science fiction convention in Oklahoma City.

One of the guests of honor was the late Richard Biggs. He had played the role of Dr. Stephen Franklin on Babylon 5. In his speech he mentioned that he’d also played a doctor on a soap opera.

The public at large, he said, thought scifi fans to be a bit strange, but he said soap fans were the ones not grounded in reality. If they didn’t like your character they didn’t like you, the actor either. But in scifi you could play a badass character and a scifi fan would just tell you what a great job you’d done in the role.

That reminds me of an anecdote from some actor I can’t recall at the moment (I want to say Perry King). He was playing a gay character, and people started to question his sexuality because of it. His response (paraphrased) was:

“It’s amazing. People don’t think you’re a murderer if you play one.”

[Harvey_The_Heavy]

Richard Gere in An Officer And A Gentleman. I can’t think of any character in any movie that I dislike more than that one. The thought of someone like that being commissioned makes me ill.

[Drunky_Smurf]

@Wile_E

Zooey Deschanel in Winter Passing. There was a scene I found reprehensible. I actually walked out of the movie that I was watching in my own living room, I went and cleaned my kitchen and left my boyfriend to finish watching it. I always thought she was a crunchy granola type and would have enough say as the star of the film to object to the scene. I don’t care if it was to show how broken her character was, I found it an unnecessary depiction of animal cruelty. I wasn’t a huge fan of hers before this but I lost any respect or interest in her as an actress after that.

The scene

She had a sick kitten with feline leukemia, she had taken it to a vet but it wasn’t getting better. She talked on the phone with the vet, euthanasia was discussed. Then she had to go visit her father so she put the kitten in a duffle bag and dropped it off a dock into the water. She could have taken it back to the vet but no, she chose a cruel method to end the kittens life. It would not have been quick, the kitten would have died in terror. If it was a money thing she could have taken it to a shelter for euthanasia.

I really liked her in Elf but after reading this, I haven’t even seen the movie, I gotta say she’s not looking so good.

[Superdude]

Actually, Drunky, the future Girl Wonder ALWAYS looks good.

[orangeapples]

I tend to go the other way on this one, wherein the actor sours me on his or her role(s). I can generally acknowledge a character’s detestability as a fine performance and appreciate the actor’s skill, but if a performer does something vile, I find it taints my view of their work.

[Loach]

@Wile_E

Yes, I know. Did you realize that this thread is about roles that soured you on an actor? Everyone else told their stories about actors playing a role, mine is no different. The screenwriter and directors are the ones who put the stuff into the movies, same as with all the other actors mentioned. So why is no one else’s opinion wrong?

Also, it was not a sensible solution to the character’s problem, if they wanted to show how broken the character was, there were other ways without resorting to animal cruelty. So yes, the main fault was the writer’s but this thread is about actors and that role soured me on her and I still think she could have objected and had it changed.

If it will make you feel better, in real life she is a strict vegan and literally wouldn’t hurt a fly.