Can’t stand Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s so patronizing. Just thinking about him is the same as listening to nails on a chalkboard.
Nicholas Cage. No matter what role he plays, he always has the facial expression of a puppy that’s been kicked repeatedly.
Rebel Wilson. Why on earth is this woman even semi-famous?
THANK you. I have yet to see an actress not only in her age group who is less sexy, feminine, etc. I find her repulsive, overeager but unable to appear charming or anything else the wants to portrait. No idea why she is cast at all.
Mostly the same, perhaps not to that degree, goes for:
- Jennifer Garner
- Jennifer Lopez (just too dumb acting)
- Renee Zellweger (one single face expression with an artificially puckered mouth)
On the male side there are some seeing the faces of which appearing on the screen makes for lightning zapping:
- Adam Sandler (who watches the crappy issue no. 79 of the same movie over and over again?)
- Will Ferrell (see above, hard to find someone less funny)
- Eddy Murphy (he was somewhat cool in the 80s but is unbearable now)
- Steven Seagal (any piece of wood has more acting skills)
Juliette Lewis with her enormous forehead and ‘I smell shit’ screwed up face is unwatchable. She was particularly grotesque in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ - she looked like a wooden marionette with her sticklike limbs and huge head. Johnny Depp looked like a beauty queen winner next to her.
Hee. IIRC the first thing I ever saw her in is Cape Fear and I thought she was supposed to be a special needs kid (which made the scene at the school with DeNiro even that much more cringeworthy). It’s more than simply not being conventionally attractive; she just seems altogether “off”.
I agree with almost every post here. I guess I’m really not a fan of the ‘Entertainment Industry’.
I’ll add a few I didn’t see yet. Kevin Cline. Hate that guy. Elizabeth Rohm. Worst actor ever to appear on Law & Order, and that is really saying something!
Forgot the third one. Oh well.
I’ll add William Hurt to the list. His acting usually consists of staring off into space with no expression, and then mumbling his lines.
Shia Labeouf, Bradley Cooper, and Justin Long. There are exceptions for each, like Bradley Cooper in The Hangover and Justin Long in Jeepers Creepers, but in general just seem like smug douches.
I actually like most of the people mentioned in this thread. Or at least find them “inoffensive.”
However, I offer up Chris Tucker. Just can’t stand him. For a movie like The Fifth Element, which is otherwise great, I can never watch that again. I’m a huge Jackie Chan fan; have seen most of his stuff, including the pre-Hollywood Hong Kong silly kung-fu movies he did. But I’ve never seen Rush Hour. Just can’t do it.
But in the spirit of the OP, which asks for the exception, I’ll mention Jackie Brown. I loved his scene with Sam Jackson. Of course, the fact that Chris Tucker ends up shot dead in the trunk of a car adds to my enjoyment.
Came in to post exactly this.
It’s notable, though, that in Stranger Than Fiction Will Ferrell played very much against type.
Oddly enough, the actor whose performance in that movie I really didn’t enjoy was Emma Thompson; usually, I love everything she does. It may have been the character she played, though.
I thought Robert DeNiro had an interesting performance, as well. Also against type for him.
Tommy Lee Jones–smug and self-conscious (Watch me–I’m ACTING!! LOOK HOW GOOD I AM AT IT!!)
I love The Fifth Element and I think that Chris Tucker’s character was annoying was entirely the point; the character annoys those around him, Korben Dallas in particular.
Can’t believe I’m the first to mention Barbra Streisand. OMG that voice. Prince of Tides is a great book, but I can’t watch the movie.
The only good thing Barbra Streisand was ever in was South Park.
I don’t like Will Smiths acting. I liked him on the fresh prince, but when he acted in movies he tries too hard to play an alpha male. I am glad he didn’t get the role of Neo in the matrix, he would’ve made that movie worse.
Steve Martin. Yes, I know that he’s multi-talented: comedian, actor, musician, writer. But he’s always rubbed me the wrong way.
I guess that I “soured” on him early on; I related to the “countercultural” comedians. Lenny Bruce was a bit before my time, but I enjoyed satirists and contrarians like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, etc. Martin presented himself as a sort of new wave “it’s hip to be square” comedian with non-intellectual, cheerfully goofy or zany shtick; I didn’t find his “let’s get small” routine mocking recreational drug use funny.
My sister (we’re both 60something now) finds him hilarious, or used to; just walking on stage with the fake arrow stuck through his head put her on the floor. Meh. I liked “King Tut”, though.
He seems to cultivate a “nice guy” image; I don’t trust it. Maybe it’s genuine, but I always suspect that there’s a dark side that hasn’t been exposed yet.
Years ago, I was forced to watch him in “Pennies from Heaven”; it didn’t improve my opinion of him. Also, when Saddam Hussein was executed he posted a gloating, jingo-dripping mock obituary in “Huffington Post”; it was a self-indulgent piss on Hussein’s grave, playing to the fist-pumping patriotic peanut gallery.
I posted a comment to that piece that if anybody deserved to be hung, it was Martin for appearing in “Cheaper by the Dozen Part II”. HuffPo deleted the post on the grounds that I was “threatening violence to a contributor.”
I don’t like him either, because to me, he always looks as though he smells bad.
However, my all-time choice for “I don’t get how he’s so famous, he leaves me cold,” is Robin Williams. The only thing I ever liked him in is The Birdcage, where he played straight (no pun) man to Nathan Lane. He did this so well, it was like he was born to do it. And Nathan Lane bested every coke-addled, finger-drinking, weird-voiced attempt Williams had ever made at being funny.
But enough speaking ill of the dead: someone who really grinds my gears, and it’s not just a matter of different tastes, is Melissa Gilbert. Yes, I realize her career was mostly TV movies, but she’s sitting on a pile on money, and retired before she was 45 (I think she may produce, but she does very little acting and no directing). She was also president of SAG, so Hollywood takes her seriously.
If I had to choose between watching one of her movies, and watching Donald Trump eat Buffalo wings without a napkin, I’d watch Trump.
The only thing I can figure, is that she must have had a precocious memory. When she was 8, or 10, or however old she was when that dreadful TV show premiered, she probably could memorize a page of script like nobody’s business, which is a seriously valuable commodity is a child who will be onscreen as much as she was. There’s no other explanation. She wasn’t twins. She wasn’t an 18-yr-old who looked 10. She wasn’t talented. And her teeth were green. When my friends made me watch the show, all I could do was stare at her green teeth. Yeah, it was probably historically accurate, but so would it have been for her parents to be missing a few.
The only good things you can say about her is that she appears to have avoided becoming an alcoholic or drug addict, and hasn’t squandered her residuals from her show. I guess those are pretty good qualities, but they don’t help you act for crap.
I totally agree. There is one single thing I thought he did very well. He appears in a 5 or 6 minute scene in And the Band Played On. He plays a man whose brother was gay, and the family was all, “don’t ask, don’t tell” about it. Investigators come to his home to ask him, and they directly say “Was he gay?” at first, Martin’s character says no, but after they ask a little more, he waffles, and starts explaining that there was just sort of a gentlemen’s agreement not to ask about his brother’s private life, but yes, he knew things, but he still wouldn’t say, because, well, his brother never told him directly–
The investigators cut him off by telling him that HIV+ blood donations, which had killed a baby, had been traced back to his brother. This was when gay men were already being asked to refrain from donating.
The look on Martin’s face is some of the finest acting anywhere.
But yeah, every other thing he’s ever done is crap.
And NO ONE is Czechoslovakian. You are Czech, or you are Slovak-- unless you are really old school, and are Moravian (or Jewish), but pretty much, you are Czech, or you are Slovak. People with one Czech parent, and one Slovak parent refer to themselves as “half-Czech, half-Slovak,” not “Czechoslovakian.” I know this. I have family living in both the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and I have been to both-- albeit, technically, I have been to Czechoslovakia, which is how I know for a fact that NO ONE is Czechoslovakian.
Oh man, yes. I can’t stand this guy. In addition to you points, he can literally only play this bro version of himself. He absolutely horrid in anything that requires him to play anything else.
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He was smug and self conscious when Terry Gross tried to interview him on Fresh Air.
Put me down for Will Ferrell, too. So annoying. I’m assured that he was great in Elf, but judging from the clips I’ve seen he’s even worse.