I’m not talking about actors that are terrible actors (Julia Roberts) or those that are typecast into one role (Richard Gere). I’m talking about well-known actors that just show up on set and the director tells them to be themselves no matter what they do. My examples:
Mickey Rourke: I think the director just tells him to hang aorund on the set and then shoots the scene without him knowing. Hell, I don’t think he goes to Costume but is wearing his regular street clothes.
Jeff Goldblum: I met him about 25 years ago. What you see on the screen is him.
James Spader: I think deep down in the recesses of his brain he truly thinks his last name is California and he is the CEO of a paper company after a top-secret career as an archaeologist (hence the name change) and after he got bored with practicing law.
Right. Whenever you see Freeman or Wayne or Murphy in a role, you are aware you are watching Freeman or Wayne or Murphy in a role. Contrast that with Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep.
There is nothing wrong with always playing the same character, except calling it acting.
As others have pointed out, people believe that John Wayne is the epitome of the American cowboy spirit. If that’s not acting, nothing is.
You can be a great actor playing the same character all the time, or playing much different characters each time. The importance is how they manage to create emotions in an audience. If you think what Freeman or Wayne or Murphy is easy, try doing it sometimes.
James Garner is one actor whose roles are very similar. He’s also a pretty good actor overall.
The secret to being a good actor is to make your character believable. John Wayne was not capable of doing that. Everyone I have ever met who likes John Wayne grew up during WWII or shortly thereafter. John Wayne made a bunch of patriotic films that people needed at the time. My theory is JW was presented as the Ultimate American Hero at a time when the country needed someone to fill that image. That does not mean his movies were good or he was a good actor.
Porn stars create strong emotions in their audiences. Doesn’t mean they are good actors.
Acting isn’t necessarily being different than how you are. Acting is making the character seem real in the circumstances. Reacting like a person would react, showing the right emotions for the scene, that kind of thing. Just because an actor is largely playing himself in that character doesn’t make that a bad acting job, if he’s pulling off the look and feel of the situations. That’s what makes acting convincing.
Hamming it up, overselling, or not being in synch with the situation is much more off-putting than an actor seeming to be the same person in all of his roles.
For a great example of Mickey Rourke as a full-on, capital-A “actor,” see Angel Heart. No matter what he’s done before or since, that was a tour de force performance.
As to one-note actors, I think Rourke’s Angel Heart co-star Robert de Niro has recently fallen into simply playing himself in various types of situations, as has Jack Nicholson. Maybe that’s just a side-effect of becoming an iconic actor.
You don’t think winning the Oscar for FORREST GUMP required him to play a role differently than when he won the Oscar the year before, in PHILADELPHIA? (And which of those recycled his award-winning persona from BIG?)
To be honest, I think Mickey Rourke would come up with different performances for a mentally slow character or a character that’s a kid in an adult’s body.
I think Tom Hanks has a certain amount of range, but it’s not like he’s a chameleon like Christian Bale or whoever.
It’s a popular meme to accuse Wayne of this, but it just isn’t borne out by his career. Check out the underrated WWII movie In Harm’s Way and then tell me Wayne can’t act or can’t appear as anything other than John Wayne.
Wayne’s character is older, more or less stalled in his career, and, while he does succeed in fulfilling his military missions and receive promotion, he is by no means triumphantly overcoming; he is more or less just surviving. Ultimately, he is invalidated out of the service and can look forward to no more than a quiet retirement. He plays the character such that you can feel his pain and his disappointment with his life.
Totally different than “the cowboy” character he is stereotyped with, and a great job of acting. He could do it when he had to.
I’m glad someone said this. I wonder if people think Wayne was doing Wayne at 8. His character was developed by Ford in Stagecoach. And he was also a lot different in The Searchers from his super-heroic roles.
Having the audience say “wow, that is some great acting” is not the hallmark of great acting. Great acting involves getting into the character, and the story, and being so believable in it that people think you are just being yourself. Anyone who has ever been on a set and seen the actors do the same thing take after take, camera set up after camera set up, probably won’t think it is so easy. There is also the need to project a personality to be picked up by the deadening camera.
BTW, as far as I’ve read, reacting is harder than acting, because reacting implies that you are deep within the scene as if it were real, and deep inside your character, despite doing a scene of a dozen lines out of order and despite all the fakery of a set.
Some people are Actors and some people are Movie Stars, some are both. Each has it’s own merits and none of it is easy. Actors can transform themselves to suit a part. Movie Stars can transform a part to suit them. There’s a time and need for both.