Years ago it was observed to me that British actors were far less picky than American actors in choosing their projects. American actors were described as far more concerned with “managing their career & image” than Brits. Whereas the British actors just considered it work. If it was in a quality project then all the better. This was the time of Michael Caine (Jaws 4) and Laurence Olivier (The Betsy!).
I can’t say I have been dis-abused of this notion altogether regarding the Brits (Ben Kingsley - Love Guru). But I think that American actors have softened up just a bit about taking roles for the work, and sometimes for the ironic pleasure of playing on their own celebrity & image (Brando - The Freshman, DeNiro - Fockers).
Joseph-Gordon-Levitt in an interview said that he always wanted to do a movie like that (big, action-packed block buster), but seeing as he damn well knows is not action-hero material, he happily signed on the GI Joe because he figures he’ll never get another opportunity to do one.
After his turns in Brick, The Lookout and Mysterious Skin he’s been getting a lot of positive press from critics in the film festival circuit. Now that he’s leaving his “child actor” career behind, he is definitely becoming a very credible performer.
Like **Argent Towers **said, you missed the part in the thread title where it says ‘*Great *actor’.
My nomination is certainly Marlon Brando. He absolutely meets the ‘great actor’ requirement in a way that many if not most actors mentioned mentioned in this thread do. At the same time, most of his catalogue are films that he was in to finance his doomed project of building a tourist destination out of a Tahiti island and to cover legal fees for all the court cases that he was involved in.
I’ll give both Eccleston and Gordon-Levitt are credible performers. I’m not familiar enough with the former to call him a great actor, though, and the latter has quite a ways to go before he can be considered a great actor. Perhaps Eccleston is an English great, but on shows widely available on my side of the pond, he’s got Heroes, Doctor Who, The Legend of the Seeker, GI Joe, and a few guest appearances.
I disagree. Granted, Zardoz is an incoherent mess but it’s not a big empty action flick and Connery’s presence in it is not really an example of a “They drove a dump truck of money up to my house!” type of role (unlike, say, Highlander II or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Zardoz was the film director John Boorman did after the hugely successful Deliverance so by virtue of the good will generated by that film, there was a fair amount of interest and anticipation going into the project. At the same time, Connery was coming off his run as James Bond and wanted to do something artistically ambitious. Unfortunately, while Boorman has directed some good films (e.g., Point Blank, Hope and Glory, and the already mentioned Deliverance), his style is a bit eccentric and that can result in some real trainwrecks.** Zardoz **ended up being one of his trainwrecks.
That’s a much better (albeit obscure) example. It’s one thing to whore yourself out for a role in a gazillion dollar empty-headed sci-fi/action flick but it’s even worse when it’s for a cheapjack Italian rip-off of Jaws with special effects that look like they were done in somebody’s bathtub.
How about Samuel L. Jackson? He’s a good actor and should have enough presence in Hollywood by now to be able to be picky about the roles he takes. But he also enthusiastically did Snakes on a Plane.
I used to think nice things about Dennis Hopper and then I saw him in the abysmally bad fourth Crow movie as a jive-talking Satan-worshiping pimp. You lose a lot of respect for a guy when he shouts “Satan is my homie!” like he means it.
While I agree that Zardoz doesn’t belong in this category, I have to disagree about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – this is another case like Rocky and Bullwinkle above – Sean Connery himself is executive producer. The guy wanted to make this film – he wasn’t seduced in by someone else’s truckloads of money.
I’ve got a theory that there’s a reason for this, and for much of the departure from Alan Moore’s story line. Connery wanted to make one last Big Adventure Film, and this is it, with him playing the old time hero, Alan Quartermain himself. There’s no way he’d let Mina hog the glory and show himself as a rescued drug addict, so that part of the story went out the window, and Alan Quartermain grabbed the center stage. It also shows him passing the torch onto the next generation, as he gives the gun to the Tom Sawyer character, and effectively lets him do the Killing Shot at the end – after Quartermain himself gives him instruction.
Connery hasn’t done any films since then (He has three following credits on IMDb, but they’re all for voice-only work)
James Caan was interviewed for a British documentary about Hollywood, and he explained that he is a perfect barometer for bad movies. He gave numerous examples where he had the opportunity to be in a movie that went on to win critical acclaim and awards, but turned it down for another one that ended up being an epic failure. It sounded to me like he wasn’t whoring at all – he honestly believed that the movies he chose were going to be great; he just has a terrible sense of what will be a great movie.
James Caan also appeared in more science fiction films than I’d expect – Countdown, Rollerball, Alien Nation, Lathe of Heaven. I’m not saying they were bad films – heck, I’m a science fiction fan, and I think these flicks were better than the average run. But mainstream and Hollywood tend to think of SF as the Gutter, and I;'m surprised he did so many of them.
Not necessarily. You’re thinking of producer. The title of executive producer is largely meaningless, and is sometimes just a bone thrown to someone who might only be peripherally involved in a film. It’s possible it was offered to Connery as a flattery-padding of his salary.
Not necessarily, although I suspect that’s usually true. I really do think that Connery held out for story changes that suited his purpose – the entire story of Quartermnain fits in so well with what I have outlined that I suspect he’d not have done the film if he couldn’t do it that way. Whether the “executive producer” title is merely ornamental and a sop to the star’s ego is irrelevant if that’s true.
In America we see acting as art. Some of these movies is like Picasso doing a paint by numbers painting. It is beneath him. Bet he could have sold it too.