Jack Nicholson. Every time I see him in a movie, I’m thinking “Boy, it looks like Jack is having fun” and not at all thinking about his character. Edited to note that someone has already mentioned him.
Hugh Grant? I think the only time he’s really attempted to play a “Non-Hugh-Grant-y” character was a crime drama with Gene Hackman called Extreme Measures.
Bill Murray. Does he ever do anything where he isn’t laconic, ironic, dead-pan, wry?
The last 15 minutes or so of Broken Flowers. It’s heartbreaking, precisely because it’s been so perfectly set up by the laconic, ironic, dead-pan, and wry hour and a half that comes before it.
That doesn’t apply to Eddie Murphy as a rule. Watch Coming to America. He plays many different people in the movie. I watched it a few times before I realized that he was not only the lead but also characters like the old Jewish man in the barber shop as well.
But even guys who always SEEM to be playing the same character really aren’t.
To use one of your examples… Jimmy Stewart was NOT always the same folksy, lovable doofus we often remember him as. Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey was NOTHING like Scotty Ferguson in*** Vertigo.*** Tom Destry was NOTHING like Ransom Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Stewart had a LOT more range than we tend to remember.
So did many actors we think of as being one-dimensional.
Are you saying Bill Murray isn’t a good actor? Bill Murray? He should have gotten at least three Oscars for Groundhog Day alone.
I’d say Keanu Reaves, but is he an actor or a cardboard prop?
And then there was Wayne as Ghenges Khan …
Definately. A lot of the reason why I disliked Batman. It wasn’t The Joker, it was Jack Nicholson dressed up like The Joker. Heath Ledger became The Joker.
Surprised nobody’s mentioned Christopher Walken yet. Although as with several other examples here, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If your style is iconic enough tthat people speak of your type of character by name and actively seek you for said roles, you must be doing something right.
I thought one of the flaws with the second Jurassic Park movie was that Goldblum was playing Ian Malcolm as a completely different person. I guess that was the writers’ fault.
I thought he was pretty different in The Razor’s Edge.
He admittedly does that in SCROOGED, but solely to emphasize the wide-eyed manic enthusiasm he lives it up in the rest of the time.
That’ frequently true… but even Nicholson is quite capable of doing great work when he has an interesting script and a director who dares push him to do more than his “Crazy Jack” schtick.
A lot of directors, it seems, WANT Jack to do his usual cartoonish self-caricature, and he’ll willingly do that if the price is right. But he WASN’T Crazy Jack in*** About *Schmidt or The Pledge.
Yep - that’s who I immediately thought of.
I even started a thread on this subject, but my example was Alan Rickman who seems to play the same, smarmy, dripping with better-than-thou sarcasm character in almost every role I’ve seen of his. I’m sure he has done stuff that doesn’t have the same persona, but I don’t think I’ve seen it…
Agreed.
If you really want an example of “not acting,” think about when a famous person—an athlete, a musician, a politician—has a cameo-type role in a movie or TV episode. Occasionally such people can actually act, but more often, they give a performance compared with which every one of the people named in this thread can and do act circles around.
I’d be able to discuss George Clooney’s acting ability if I ever saw him do it.
-and +1 to the recommendation for The Searchers for people who think John Wayne can’t act.
Nicholson was great in “Good as it Gets”
how about Zoe Daschnell (or however you spell it) she is a one trick pony if I ever saw one.