In contrast to Actors you don’t like anymore, who are some actors that you like more now than before?
I’ve always enjoyed Henry Winkler, but watching him in Barry has given me a whole new appreciation of his depth.
How about James Spader? He was sorta okay for decades, but as an older guy he is able to pull off so much more.
I like Kevin Costner once again. He made a lot of crap movies after the Bodyguard and Dances with Wolves (like Water World and Robin Hood). He has found a new start with with his character on Yellowstone. Grizzled old man fits him well.
John Ritter was cringeworthy for me as a comedian. I found him shallow. Then I saw him in Sling-blade and other dramas. Wow.
Stana Katic. I’ve always liked her, but the more I see of her the more I wish I could direct her in Shakespeare—or Æschylus, for that matter. (I was one of the several hundred who got to catch her the one night she did the terrifying [if you’re an actor] White Rabbit Red Rabbit in New York.)
I like both David Tennent and Michael Sheen but seeing them together as friends in real life and their zoom show made me like both more.
Seeing Sam Jackson interact as an old married couple with his wife of over 40 years is adorable and makes me like him more.
I didn’t like Ryan Reynolds for years, but of late he’s won me over. Free Guy especially but many other of his roles in the last 4 years or so.
Yeah, Samuel L Jackson just gets better and better. If you can find it, he reads a children’s book called Go the F#$% to Sleep that’ll put you on the floor, laughing, imagining him reading it to a small kid.
He read the audiobook for a book called Stargirl and he did just a fantastic job. A great audiobook and he is the reason why.
Keanu Reeves. As a younger actor, he made a conscious effort to stretch himself, looking for roles that would test the boundaries of his ability. That’s a respectable impulse, but it necessarily meant he would exceed them now and then. For every Speed or Point Break, there would be an embarrassing Much Ado or Dracula.
As an older actor, he’s definitely found his comfortable lane, and he has the confidence to make fun of himself occasionally with stuff like Always Be My Maybe.
Plus he keeps doing incredibly generous and classy things like this:
In my mind he’s spent a few decades slowly evolving from something like a “whoa” stoner joke to a national treasure.
Jon Hamm did a very good job as the star of a very good TV series. But other than Mad Men, he has seemingly done whatever goofy cameos or interesting supporting parts he feels like, whenever he feels like.
“You want me to play the voice of an automated condo in the obscure Canadian web series The Amazing Gayl Pile? Sure, why not!”
Michael McKean’s performance in Better Call Saul made me respect him a lot more as an actor.
Have you seen the series Swedish Dicks? It’s another “Reeves pops in occasionally to do a completely ridiculous cameo” show. (It also stars Peter Stormare, who is also great fun to watch.)
My opinion of his acting is mixed (e.g. loved him in Constantine, found him wooden in The Devil’s Advocate), but there are a bazillion stories of his off-camera behavior that suggest he is an excellent human being. And I’ll take “good person, so-so actor” over the reverse any day.
More of a “no opinion” changing to “huge fan,” I knew basically nothing about Selena Gomez before this year. I knew she was on some Disney kids show, maybe? Had some pop albums that I’d never heard. Didn’t dislike her, just had no thoughts about her at all as teen fluff isn’t my thing. Then she shows up as the third lead on Only Murders in the Building, holding her own with Steve Martin and Martin Short with absolute crack comic timing and serious dramatic chops. Now I’m a fan, and I suspect she’ll have a much longer career than a lot of her teen industry compatriots.
I didn’t think much of Brad Pitt in the admittedly few roles I’ve seen him in. I thought he was just a looker and not much else.
But he stole the show in Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood, IMO. Leonardo Dicaprio was very good, as always, but I liked Pitt’s performance even better.
And I didn’t care for Wil Wheaton much in Stand By Me or at all in Star Trek TNG, but I loved him in The Big Bang Theory.
I absolutely hated Steve Martin, both as an actor and a comedian.
Then I read something about that he wasn’t being a comedian, he was acting like he was a comedian. It changed my perspective and movies like Roxanne, Three Amigos, L.A. Story, and others of that era showed him to be quite a good comic actor when he dropped the schtick.
A scene with Reeves where an actor emerges.
I agree with the aforementioned Henry Winkler and Michael McKean. Their over-the-top, gag-driven performances in Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley turned me off of them for a long time. But Winkler’s subsequent dry wit development and McKean’s fine acting chops eventually won me over.
Yeah, even back in his younger days when he was memetically wooden, I respected the courage it took to attempt challenging roles in movies like My Own Private Idaho and Much Ado About Nothing. Especially the latter; for a young actor primarily known for playing a dimwitted stoner to share a screen with RADA-trained heavyweights like Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Brian Blessed and Richard Briers, and in a Shakespeare adaptation to boot, took some stones.
And, as you say, he’s famously one of the nicest people in Hollywood; I remember when he bought motorcycles for all the stuntmen involved in the “Burly Brawl” in (?) The Matrix: Revolutions.
If you haven’t already, try him in a non-comedic role: The Spanish Prisoner - Wikipedia