Thank you. I agree. I came on here to say that I think everyone is getting hung up on that distinction.
I can not stand Al Pacino. He plays the same person in every movie. He has such a distinctive vocal pattern and tone that he always just sounds like Al Pacino. He never seems to vary his mannerisms or anything about his behavior from character to character. I prefer actors who are constantly changing themselves for a role such as Cate Blanchett. However I think it ultimately depends on the roles that an actor chooses. For instance, Cate Blanchett is always choosing roles that are different from the last role she played and she often does period films. Al Pacino is ususally in a similar role so he will act similarly.
On a related note, I was recently watching Inside the Actor’s Studio with Sarah Jessica Parker (why she was even on, I don’t know.) One of the students in the audience asked about her mannerisms for Carrie Bradshaw and how they were so similar to her own. Her response was something like “Hmm. I’ve never thought about changing my mannerisms for a character.That is really interesting.” :smack: I wanted to punch her.*
I think it did require that, and he didn’t deliver. He played a high-flying lawyer as only slightly more intelligent and less naive than Forrest Gump, who was only a slurred-voice version of his character in Big, who was supposed to be a 12-year-old in an adult world but managed to seem really rather mentally-challenged rather than just gauche. The man has the range of a paper aeroplane.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Well, actually, in Hanks’ case for me it is, because I don’t like the character that he consistently plays, but YMMV. Hugh Grant’s been mentioned, and yeah, he doesn’t seem to have much of a range, but he’s very good at what he does. In Love, Actually he managed to make a politician likable.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has very little range indeed, but I loved him in all his film roles - and I always knew what I was going to get.
(Funny - the Firefox spellchecker doesn’t redline Schwarzenegger. :D)
Stallone doesn’t count for the OP’s purposes. Not just because he has acted a bit in at least one role (Copland) but because I doubt he’s that much like his roles in real life. I mean, he wrote the script for Rocky, wrote a few other scripts and directed several films from as early on as Rocky II. He’s no dumb-ass.
Carey can act really well when he wants to. His range is at the extremes - he acts the dumb manic type in his stupid films like Dumb and Dumber, and the quiet, troubled type in films like Eternal Sunshine, but in the Truman Show he managed a bit of both. He did a really good job of being the everyman who was also totally unreal.
I don’t see how Brandt in The Big Lebowski and the Bronx priest in Doubt can be seen as the same variation on anything, aside from “male human beings.” And Untoward_Parable didn’t even mention his role in Boogie Nights.
We do have to be careful about confusing “lack of range” for “typecasting.” Morgan Freeman is most certainly typecast at this point in his career. Same for Jack Nicholson.
I’m interested to see how George Clooney is in The Descendants since he seems to be breaking away from the two roles he normally plays: smooth talker and/or deadly serious man dealing with deadly serious business. (I think he’s good in both those kinds of roles, by the way.)
I think the best answers in the thread are actors who aren’t even playing a type. They’re just, you know, taking up space on screen. Sr Siete was dead-on with Jason Statham. Statham is not acting - he’s just furrowing his brow and saying lines in his “tough guy” voice.
COP LAND proves he was capable of playing a doormat who struggles to be amiably world-weary but only ever got to just plain weary – and fat, and sad, and a little too in love with what could’ve been and a little too fond of hitting the bottle in the meanwhile.
I think there is a problem with perspective when we evaluate an actor we don’t like, like my mother cannot eat spicy food, No matter what you give her if it’s spicy that’s all she’s going to notice about it. Philip Hoffman always is going to have Hoffmaness to his characters, so if you hate him as an actor well you’re not going to notice his range. You really need to see him in Flawless (great Robert Deniro flick btw) if you aren’t sold on his versatility anyway. I’m sure there are actors that I don’t give credit to on range because I can’t stand them. Perception is one of the least reliable things about human beings after all.
If you honestly think the Oh Brother Clooney is the same as the Michael Clayton Clooney there’s something more going on here. Oh lord, I just realized this turned into just another Bash Actors I Don’t Like (Especially If I Don’t Like Their Politics) thread. Silly me. I’m surprised a teabagger hasn’t weighed in with Sean Penn’s “lack of range.”
But the funny thing is that up to a career point, Al Pacino was not over the top or spoke like he smokes 3 packs a day. Mrs Cad says he started that character in Scent of a Woman (I never saw it) and never changed.
I haven’t seen him in enough roles to say that he’s super duper amazing, but the nervous sycophant he plays in The Big Lebowski is nothing like that curt, opinionated blowhard he plays in Almost Famous.
Actually, I like Phillip Seymour Hoffman just fine, and I think he is one of those actors who has a knack for choosing good scripts, for which I give him a lot of credit.
I just don’t think he deserves all the acclaim he gets. He is a good actor, not a great one.
I really don’t think Seth Rogen is acting. He basically plays himself in every movie he’s been in. I’ve never seen the Green Hornet but I’ve seen almost everything else that Rogen is in, and he always plays Seth Rogen. In 40 Year Old Virgin, he was a little cockier, and in Funny People he was a little more of a sad sack, but it’s really the same character. I like him, though. I don’t mind that he plays himself.