What makes for a ‘bad’ actor is entirely subjective, of course. Hence the quote marks. But this comment from the other thread:
…got me thinking. I agree with the Nick Cage assessment. I will watch nearly anything Cage is in, because I enjoy seeing what oddball acting quirk he decides to incorporate into his latest performance. Is it manic scenery chewing (most of his movies)? Is it deciding his character never blinks, as in that angel movie I can’t remember the name of and don’t feel like looking up? Is it not saying a word while kicking supernaturally possessed animatronic ass, as in that ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ ripoff, the actual name of which I also can’t remember? Or is it going entirely the opposite of his usual instinct and completely underplaying the role, as in ‘Pig’? Always a fun surprise with that guy.
Another ‘bad’ actor whose movies I nevertheless usually enjoy is Keanu Reeves. He is in general pretty wooden as an actor and utterly fails at any attempt at an accent other than ‘Cali surfer dude’. He always seems to play himself in every role. His most successful roles seem to lean into this, as in the ‘Bill and Ted’ movies, or ‘The Matrix’, in which his Neo character seemed to be a toned-down version of Ted-- ‘whoah’. Yet, I can’t help liking the actor himself, and by extension most of the characters he plays.
I recently listened to a podcast with an actor who worked with Walken (unfortunately I can’t remember the actor nor the podcast right now). He said that Walken’s #1 acting tip to him was ‘ignore all punctuation in the script’.
I wouldn’t call either of them “bad” actors. More like acquired tastes.
In his younger years, I singled out Keanu Reeves as one of the worst actors I’d ever seen. Wooden and totally inept. In recent years, I’ve mellowed toward him. He’s a good action star, as the “Matrix” movies bear out. And I’ve read that he’s a pretty good guy in real life who isn’t full of himself, treats people well on the set and is always willing to meet and greet fans.
For a long time, I couldn’t stand Nick Cage, but I’ve warmed up to him too. He has the ability to elevate whatever crap he signs up to do, and really shines when he has a good role to play.
I’ve always thought Julia Stiles was a bad actress who seemed to be in every other movie for a while there. I’ve never changed my mind about her.
[quote=“solost, post:1, topic:1006465”]
He always seems to play himself in every role.
[/quote] Some very successful stars, in my opinion, seem to play themselves, even though they might have the acting chops. Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, James Garner, Robert Mitchum just off the top of my head. And why not, if it’s getting you the big paychecks!
I enjoy Jean Claude van Damme’s movies–he is very charismatic and is able poke fun at himself unlike his rival Steven Seagal,
I also for the most part enjoy Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies as well.
I know people consider both of them to be be “bad” actors but I have watched a lot of low budget action and sci-fi movies with actors who NOT capable of acting at the level that both van Damme and Schwarzenegger are.
As I said in the OP, I put quote marks around ‘bad’ because it is very subjective. How about “Actors who some consider ‘bad’, who you still enjoy watching”.
And I agree with you about Keanu. He has found his niche as an action star, and I understand he trained very intensely for the ‘John Wick’ movies, and it showed. But, I mean, he doesn’t have the range to try to pull off something like, say, Shakespeare
But have either ever presented themselves as anything other than action movie stars?
I think that’s a critical distinction here; people are happy to shit all over JCVD and Arnold for being bad actors, but from what I can tell, neither has really ever aspired for anything other than what they’ve achieved in terms of acting. And I agree- they’re reasonably competent at what they do. I was actually surprised a bit watching FUBAR on Netflix- Arnold is definitely a better actor than he used to be.
I feel like if your goal is to be a [something]-turned action star, then maybe people ought not be comparing you to Laurence Olivier or Daniel Day-Lewis. But if you’re an actor first and primarily, then maybe that is the comparison that should be made.
This list make me think the definition of “bad actors” is “actors who are always blatantly themselves playing a role, rather than disappearing into their performance.”
Your homework assignment: watch Maggie and report back.
The movie stars Arnold as a farmer dad and Abigail Breslin as his daughter who is infected with the zombie virus and is slowly turning. Arnold hired an acting coach and IMHO delivers the goods. Very little gore for you non-zombie-movie lovers.
The only film in which I felt he actually gave a performance was the quite meta JCVD. You can usually tell if he’s back on the nose candy, I think…his line deliveries in Expendables 2 are jaw-dropping. “Put them…on the plane!” then gesturing after pausing a second. No Retreat, No Surrender also has some gems, though it was one of his very first ones, and there’s only so much you can do with dialogue like “So. It is you. The Son. Is it not?”
For Reeves and Walken I would tend to agree with you, but not Cage. As I said in the OP, you never know quite what you’re going to get with a Cage performance, and that’s half the fun.
I suspect Cage really just comes to set ready to play; I know he was a paycheck player for a few years to get out from under his tax debt, but he’s capable of terrific, nuanced work. Check out Matchstick Men, or The Weather Man. His supporting role in Snowdon is remarkably understated and suggests that in another life he could have been an always-working character actor. And Lord of War has a few moments of histronics, but overall it’s a great performance.
There are some godawful performances that I find somewhat endearing. The Resident Evil series is chock full of them. Pretty much every line reading by Sienna Guillory in RE: Apocalypse had me gobsmacked that, apparently, nobody asked for a second take? And Milla Jovovich gives the same performance (ie: it’s allegedly a performance) in all six movies, but I have a soft spot for her.
I kinda appreciate Christophe Lambert as well. His utter incompetence with accents and his general unpickiness with scripts should sink him in my estimation, but the Highlander series is a guilty pleasure for me. I’ve only seen one French-lanugage performance from him (Besson’s Subway) but he exudes the exact same commitment to screen presence as in his English films. My fave moment with Lambert was in Mortal Kombat, where he cracks up laughing, excuses himself, continues with the line…and it’s left in the film.
Danny Trejo. Maybe he’s got all kinds of range and there might be some amazing performance of his that I have missed but my experience has been that Danny Trejo plays the role of Danny Trejo in every movie he is in. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s still kind of amazed that Hollywood lets him be in movies which is why he says yes to anything and everything.
This may be a hot take but I think Samuel L. Jackson falls into the same category. Now I know he has done some great work over the years but these days he’s basically in films to say MF just so. He also seems to dislike passing up roles.
I like to think of those guys as movie stars, instead of actors. You don’t go to see a movie star pretend to be someone else, you go to see the movie star be “themselves” in a bunch of different situations. “What if Keanu Reeves hunted vampires?” “What if Keanu Reeves was in space?” “What if Keanu Reeves fought in WWII?”
(“Themselves” is in scare quotes, because they’re not really playing themselves, they’re playing their stage persona.)
