Actors aren’t my big thing, I forget most names. But Felix (Odd Couple) didn’t seem too bright in real life, and there’s this guy that shows up with his banjo (Not Steve Martin!)on shows…can’t think of his name.After watching years of afternoon shows (my mom had the shows on) I never was impressed with many actors/actresses.Dustin Hoffman was OK, he would only talk about what he knew.
My own doubts about this study (Which, yup, the dude never produced, though I’ll try to track it down. It can’t be that hard, he only gets one newspaper) have been pretty much outlined above. It kinda goes on the assumption that “Intelligence” is like height and can be easily measured. Hell, stregnth is more easily measured than intelligence, and I’m pretty sure no one has been able to agree on a yardstick for that.
Actually, many women in the profession, no matter how they stand on issues of feminism, etc., prefer the word actor, simply because actress carries a certain “nudge-hudge, wink-wink” burden from the days (not all that long ago) when newspapers often used the phrase “woman described as an ‘actress’” as a euphemism for prostitute.
As to the main point, I know a good many professional and amateur actors. All of them are intelligent; though not all of them are well educated.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
From the examples given one might conclude that there is NO correlation -either positive or negative - between acting and intelligence. I find this surprising.
We could look at a correlation coefficient between IQ and…what? The problem is that it’s even harder to realistically measure acting ability than intelligence (though in both cases we know it when we see it).
I would point out, however, that Shakespeare was obviously HIGHLY intelligent, at least with verbal skills. Based on his writing, he had the highest vocabulary ever recorded IIRC (James Joyce was second, I believe). He was also accounted a very skilled actor.
But then, as Peter O’Toole said in “My Favorite Year”:
“I’m not an actor! I’m a movie star!”
I’m not sure you can conclude no correlation yet. I still haven’t seen any convincing examples of good actors who are stupid.
Well, now that I think of it, there is a fairly well attested story to the effect that one of the great English actresses of the 18th century was fairly dim. She was famous for her performance in the Scottish play, but didn’t even know how the story ended, because she always went home after the sleepwalking scene.
I would venture to say that many actors may be specifically less apt to critical thinking than could be wished. They seem more prone than other people of similar intelligence to fall for investment scams, homeopathy, Scientology, etc.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I’ve always beleived that if an actor/ress made me beleive their character then they did their job properly. When my mind would wander and start wondering who else would be better that that particular role, then the 1st actor failed.
My two bits
Dumb actor: George Segal
Movies: Filmography: Houdini (1998)
The November Conspiracy (1997)
The Cable Guy (1996)
The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)
It’s My Party (1996)
Flirting With Disaster (1996)
The Babysitter (1995)
Picture Windows (1995)
Army of One (1994)
Direct Hit (1994)
Deep Down (1994)
Seasons of the Heart (1994)
Following Her Heart (1994)
Taking the Heat (1993)
Joshua Tree (1993)
Me Myself and I (1992)
For the Boys (1991)
All’s Fair (1989)
Look Who’s Talking (1989)
The Endless Game (1989)
Killing 'Em Softly (1985)
Not My Kid (1985)
Stick (1985)
The Cold Room (1984)
The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood (1984)
The Deadly Game (1982)
Carbon Copy (1981)
The Last Married Couple in America (1980)
Lost and Found (1979)
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978)
Fun With Dick and Jane (1977)
Rollercoaster (1977)
The Duchess and The Dirtwater Fox (1976)
The Black Bird (1975)
Russian Roulette (1975)
The Terminal Man (1974)
California Split (1974)
Blume in Love (1973)
A Touch of Class (1973)
The Hot Rock (1972)
Born to Win (1971)
The Owl and The Pussycat (1970)
Where’s Poppa (1970)
Loving (1970)
The Bridge at Remagen (1969)
The Southern Star (1969)
The Girl Who Couldn’t Say No (1969)
Bye Bye Braverman (1968)
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967)
The Lost Command (1966)
The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
King Rat (1965)
Ship of Fools (1965)
Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964)
The Young Doctors (1961)
Comments?
Now Now…bad choices in acting jobs and smartness do not make them dumber than bricks
Look at filmmaker Russ Meyer. Supposedly a boy genius but he makes such classics as “Faster Pussycat KILL! KILL!” with Tura Santana(drool) which is not exactly a high drama. Does the experience or preference of jobs make you smarter or dumber?
James Woods is considered a genius and yes its true he scored perfect on his SAT (From what I heard too was that his way of studying involved a serious amount of drinking the night before)
Lorne Greene Dumb? Well maybe, he did stay in the series Battlestar Galactica 1980 but I prefer to think that Ben Cartwright had enough on the ball in the series to make up for him in real life. Besides, would you say Ben was dumb with Hoss and Lil Joe around?
Regarding George Segal: He did work pretty well as a prop for Jane Fonda in “Fun with Dick and Jane.”
I find myself having trouble distinguishing between the two characteristics we’re discussing. For instance, I immediately thought of a stupid actor: Keanu Reeves. But then I realized he may be Einstein for all I really know; I think of him as dumb because he’s such a bad actor. Do any of us really know enough about actors, independent of their work, to judge their intelligence?
I can personally claim that my mother once had Bill Bixby’s mother as a coworker in a department store, and if that doesn’t make me an expert I don’t know what would!
-
Female actors are no longer called actresses in the biz (yes, there are always the few exceptions.)
-
Tony Randall is very intelligent. His obnoxious quotient is also high, but that doesn’t make him a dope.
-
Kathleen Turner is an excellent actor and severely intelligent.
-
Classically trained actors, especially Shakespearean one, are usually quite intelligent, unless y’all think Sirs Geiguld and Olivier are mopes.
-
Sure, you can be a dope and a good actor. I’ll buy that. You would never have know by watching “Back to the Future” that Crispin Glover (am I getting the name right?) was a freakin’ looney.
-
Sure, you can be intelligent and be a horrible actor. Ever see Dick Cavitt act?
Peace,
I hate it when I decide to try and contribute to a thread that’s been running for awhile; you’ve gotta consider a lot of previous reponses while you cough up your own jewel.
Actors inhabit a lot of the world that has little to do with stage or screen. I inhabit a world where small businesses interact with large businesses and my world is defined by the actors. Intelligence, or its measure, has been much debated - I think some dollop of such is required to be an effective actor. Actors must be able to establish an empathetic link with their audience and subtley ferret out and respond to the clues they are given (or in the sense of film, imagine they are given). This requires intelligence, but not necessarily formal education. A good carny weight-and-birthday guesser or “gypsy” fortune teller must bring some of the same intelligence on line that a corporate fund raiser or drilling promoter does to cold read the prospect. That’s selling, which is part of acting. Or is it the other way around (the boards are a new medium for me - all of the above is transmitted w/o vocal inflection, hand movement or facial expressions)?
Rarely are the technical guys good; but when they are they’re usually very good. Mostly the money guys (& that’s money raising guys) are the best. And they possess both that degree of intelligence that allows them the ability to cold read and adopt whatever personality is required to get things moving along. Most of the big projects that get moving are due to the primary efforts of an intelligent individual in the money-raising community who, despite a career long exposure to it, does not have a grasp of the technology, but can talk about it. Reminds me of the cliche about MBA’s - they’ve pursued a curriculum that taught them to speak with definitive authority on subjects about which they know nothing (danger lurks when one of these people, as happens, decides they can save some money by doing the technical work themselves).
So on to acting and intelligence…
Well, obviously to be effective in any of the aforementioned venues (stage, screen, business promotion, fortune-telling) one must possess a command of some intelligence, but not necessarily that intelligence required to do higher math or figure out why such-and-such religious cult thinks you’re a good “bag”. Successful actors learn a lesson along the way and that is “play to your range”; I often heard Tom Cruise accussed of playing the same character in every film he does - well, if it works, do it. I played in a lot of rock bands for ~25 years and the best couple were the ones where the personalities were such that we could say, “Man, I love Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but I DO NOT play like Carl Palmer, and, although I think I would like to, I in fact CANNOT, so let’s give’m the absolute best GIMME SHELTER they ever heard and enjoy what we’re doing!”
Generalizations about actors, then, are about as reasonably applicable as generalizations about any other group of people. Intelligence is difficult to quantify, but I think a lot of us recognize that it falls somewhere in between number-crunching and people-crunching.
The bottom line is that the intelligence level of actors is all over the scale. Until someone comes up with a way of defining both “intelligence” and “acting talent” in a way that is scientifically quantifiable, then determining a correlation between intelligence (or lack thereof) and acting talent is useless.
Some actors may seem dim, because their ability to articulate their work falls far short of the quality of the work itself. This is true to some degree of Harvey Keitel (ever see his brief interview in FULL TILT BOOGIE?) and even Robert DeNiro (although in his case he sounds perhaps more reluctant than clueless).
As far as Keanu Reeves being stupid, when he bowed out of SPEED 2 and chose to do DEVIL’S ADVOCATE instead, everyone thought he was making a terrible career choice. Then SPEED 2 came out and bombed, while DEVIL’S ADVOCATE was at least a moderate commercial and critical success, for which he recieved some of the best reviews of his career. Coulda been just lucky, I guess, or maybe he’s not so dumb after all.
You should also keep in mind that, even though an actor’s movie bombed, they still got paid a lot of money. I might question their artistic qualities, but they certainly made a wise financial decision.
Yes, even if a movie bombs, an actor still gets paid–his up-front money. However, many star salaries also include a percentage of the profits or grosses of the movie. A bomb means no big fat checks coming in from all the money at the box office.
Besides, if the movie bombs, then the actor might have trouble getting paid the next time. You can’t keep demanding $10-million per pic if you last few films went belly up.