Most likely with film, but TV can count too. Prefer actors who are not huge stars today, since there’s a “well, of course, (s)he was” feel to it.
- Return of the Secaucus Seven* had pretty good acting, even though few of the cast ever did anything else.
Everyone in Blood Simple except maybe the other bartender (Maurice), who hammed his role.
it depends on how you define “low budget”, but the 1984 Wim Wenders movie Paris, Texas blew me away. Its $1.8 budget is less than twice that of Tim Burton’s short Frankenweenie released the same year (not the later, longer animated version), and WAY below that of any of that year’s more famous films.
It’s only slightly above that for Blood Simple ($1.5 million) (Return of the Secaucus Seven, made five years earlier, had a WAY lower budget of only $60k)
I watched parts of the recent remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and it demonstrated how well made the original (which according to IMDB had a $1,200,000 budget) was in comparison.
Primer (2004) had excellent acting (and everything else, too) and had a total budget of $7,000.
Michael Moriarty, early in his career, in a monster film entitled “Q”.
Trailer:
If low-low-low is the bar, I’d nominate El Mariachi, which was made and finished for something under $10k - $5k in initial production costs. It has its rough edges, but overall it competes with anything H’wood could have turned out with three more zeroes in the cost.