Yeah, Russell Crowe has quality, like him or not. Another great performance was his one in the insider - he’s versatile.
DiCaprio is great and all that, it just seems odd that the greatest actor of his generation plaudit should be given to a dwarf. So I agree he is really good, but lacks the height to take a place in the pantheon.
THinking about it, there really is a height issue with some of today’s A-listers. You wouldn’t get pygmies like Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Orlando Bloom headlining movies in the good old days. Russell Crowe even is not a tall man.
Back to the OP, I’m not sure if anyone thinks Mel Gibson is a good actor, but I find him close to unwatchable - he expresses himself through facial ticks that are a parody of acting to me.
I don’t think playing the same character over and over is necessarily a bad thing. Some actors are better at it than others. Someone once listed the five stages of a (character) actor’s career:
Who is John Doe?
Get me John Doe.
Get me a John Doe type
Get me a young John Doe.
Who is John Doe?
[QUOTE=Blank Slate]
I really disliked Quaid when he was younger. He had that grinning cocky monkey thing that Tom Cruise still displays.
But in the past 10 years or so I’ve started to enjoy some of his performances. I thought he was quite good in Frequency, In Good Company and Vantage Point.
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“The Rookie” was on last night and I watched about half an hour of it. His performance is excellent. He’s gotten better as he’s aged.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
IMDb gives DiCaprio’s height as exactly six feet.
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IMDB has a picture of DiCaprio standing with Al Gore. DiCaprio is visibly shorter than Gore, but not by much, an inch, inch and a half Gore is 6’1" (he looks taller) so I’d guess DiCaprio’s 5’11", maybe 6’.
He LOOKS young, so you think he’s small, but he isn’t.
[QUOTE=Bricker]
In “The Frisco Kid,” Harrison is a happy-go-lucky bank robber alongside Gene Wilder, not stern or quiet or wooden at all. I didn’t think he was all that stern or wooden in “Frantic,” either.
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[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I thought his best acting in years was, ironically, in the low-brow blockbuster Troy, and then learned later that he hated the director and the production with a passion. I’ve wondered if it’s because the director told him to “STOP PLAYING PETER O’TOOLE and ACT!”
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IIRC (from a magazine article about the movie), that’s exactly what happened.
[QUOTE=Frylock]
In reviews I often see Brendan Fraser referred to as a particularly good actor. But I don’ get it.,
-FrL-
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Did you see Gods and Monsters? I’d say that is #1 on the NetFlix queue for anyone wondering about Fraiser’s talent. His comedy and action roles have been more commercially successful than his dramatic ones, so of course he’s been offered more of those.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I think there is also a category of actors who can and have been great, but who later in their careers start just picking up paychecks, working in almost anything and end up becoming parodies of themselves to such an extent that it hurts their entire legacy. Examples would include Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Christopher Walken – all Oscar winners who have appeared in long strings of shit.
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I remember someone once making a joke that Al Pacino stopped acting when he realized he could make a healthy living doing Al Pacino impersonations.
I think I would nominate Kevin Costner for this category. I think he turned in B+ /A- performances for about 4 years 1987-1991 [Dances with Wolves, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, No Way Out (he did not suck) & The Untouchables] … and then I think he saw himself as a “Star” & got more creative control & started doing things like Waterworld, the Postman, Robinhood and 13 Days). This guy won 2 Oscars and hasn’t had a sniff of a major award in the last 17 years except for an inexplicable (failed) nomination for a Golden Globe for Tin Cup. I am not saying that he totally stinks & at his worst he does some cool stuff on film - but I definitely think he has been dining out on his narrow body of high level work with 1-2 major movie releases per year for 17 years - I don’t get it.
I want to mention Brando since if this can be said about him, it can be said of anybody with aspirations to be a Good Actor.
There are several roles of his where he set the bar at least as high as Olivier, Guinness, Gielgud, Bogart, Cagney, Chaplin and any other you can name who ever appeared on the Best Actor of his generation list(s).
Brando was copied by more living actors than anybody.
But he turned in some Pure Shit and for long stretches of time. He got paid large coin for doing little more than putting on the costume or standing (or lying) near the camera.
But no matter how low he sank, there are some roles of his that are how other roles are measured:
Stanley Kowalski
Terry Malloy
Vito Corleone
and even Johnny (The Wild One)
his Marc Antony was highly regarded, too.
So before casting the Good Actor of today on the trash heap because of a few poorly chosen roles, consider the Brando Factor.
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas]
I don’t think playing the same character over and over is necessarily a bad thing. Some actors are better at it than others. Someone once listed the five stages of a (character) actor’s career:
Who is John Doe?
Get me John Doe.
Get me a John Doe type
Get me a young John Doe.
Who is John Doe?
[/QUOTE] This is John Doe.
And i’m going to have to disagree with whoever mentioned Meryl Streep. I think she’s amazing, accents or not.
[QUOTE=gaffa]
Did you see Gods and Monsters? I’d say that is #1 on the NetFlix queue for anyone wondering about Fraiser’s talent.
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I agree. In fact, in the DVD extras, co-star Ian McKellan in extravagant with his praise for Fraser.
[QUOTE=gaffa]
Did you see Gods and Monsters? I’d say that is #1 on the NetFlix queue for anyone wondering about Fraiser’s talent. His comedy and action roles have been more commercially successful than his dramatic ones, so of course he’s been offered more of those.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Mosier]
I hate Jack Nicholson, and am sickened by the thought that someone, somewhere on this stupid planet of ours is going to compare Heath Ledger to him unfavorably in their role as the Joker. Jack Nicholson was the worst possible Joker!
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You’re sickened by the thought and you haven’t even seen Heath’s performance yet?
And I’m not a big Nicholson defender or anything, but he wasn’t the problem with Batman. Tim Burton was.
Tom Hanks is an overrated hack. It’s funny that people said that he plays different characters, but I disagree. There is always something of the same character involved. Always that sort of slow halting voice. The best he ever did was Forrest Gump, but he was the same character in Saving Private Ryan, Castaway, as he was in You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle. The quiet brooding but capable everyman. Forrest Gump is the only role I can think of where he was challenged as an actor.
