“I’ll be back.”
Matthew McConaughey, in every movie: “Awright, awright.” You’d know it if you heard it.
When she’s supposed to be conveying frustration Julia Roberts flaps her hands around (not her arms) like she’s trying to air dry them.
I’ve never noticed any of these except for The Shat’s cadence. And that was because someone did the impression first.
Speaking of David Caruso
I’m not sure if it’s a “tic” but a lot of actors apparently think it’s good “business” or characterization to pour insane amounts of cream or sugar into their coffee.
And Denzel does a lot of things including some weird glassy-eyed thing usually coupled with whispering. I don’t know why he gets so much respect.
Winona Ryder has that “exasperated-gasp-plus-eyeroll-of disbelief”. She can even expand her range with multiple gasps for more complex emotions!
Robert Redford: He often begins a sentence, then stops, pauses, makes a face and then says the entire sentence.
The effect is his character genuinely seems to be thinking through a situation.
Christopher. Walken. Has this, weird. Syncopated. Cadence; to his. Speech. That. Makes it, sound. Like. It’s been, written. First; and then. Had, the punctuation. Added, randomly much. Later.
I can’t wait to see how the scene goes where Lt. Garver (white) meets the police chief (black) for the first time and says, “Somehow, I thought you were…taller?”
Nathan Fillion touches his face in most scenes throughout Firefly. I have no idea if he does this in other roles.
I read a profile of him in the New York Times that said that the first thing he does when he gets the script is removes all the punctuation and then inserts his own where he sees fit. So you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as the process involved in creating “Walkenese”.
I certainly would hesitate to call it a recurring “acting tic”, but there was this one movie, I can’t remember which one, where Samuel L. Jackson played this character and he was one bad motherfucker.
Will Ferrell definitely likes to scream some of his lines for comedic effect. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it really doesn’t.
The big Harrison Ford tic is, of course, the Finger of Doom - index finger at a 45 degree angle, pointing at some poor bastard’s face.
Did he shout a lot? Cause if so, I think I just may have seen that one.
I realize he’s not doing much these days, but Michael Keaton had one that bugged the crap out of me.
In every movie he had this throw his arms out to the side and wriggle his body movement when he was saying an emotion line. I figured, at least, when he got cast as Batman that we’d be spared that. Nope, sure enough, he has a “Let’s get nuts,” moment where he did his stupid twitch.
Jennifer Aniston loves to play with her hair and tuck it behind her ears.
Watch Charmed. The girls on that show have an all out brawl of dueling tics every time they interact.
Purse lips. Squint. Tilt head. Raise eyebrow. Tilt head. Purse lips. Squint.
“Get Dow-oo-n!”