Gregory Peck once said that “actors do their best work with the worst material”.
In reading that quote in this article I wondered if anyone has any examples of this observation being true.
I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, but if Peck really did say that, it’s funny coming from a guy whose best work was almost certainly in a well-directed and sensitively written adaptation of a beloved Pulizer Prize-winning novel.
He’s so damned good that if there was bad material in one of his films, I certainly didn’t notice it.
I think Ol’ Gregory was being a tad hyperbolic to suggest EVERY actor can do this. Eddie Murphy is a very talented comic actor who could have killed his career with some of the film roles he’s taken. A few – a very few – actors can project command performances that transcend mediocre material. You see this especially in comedies.
Jim Carrey. Adam Sandler. Jack Black. Eddie Murphy. Ben Stiller.
Former MTV VJ Kurt Loder co-wrote the script for the Ike and Tina Turner biopic, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” and even he allowed that the dual Oscar nominated performances of both Angela Bassett and Lawrence Fishburne transcended the actual material.
Christopher Walken in just about anything. But then, he tends to play himself in just about anything.
Kurt Russell put on a phenomenally good, nuanced performance in “Soldier,” an otherwise dreadful cliche-fest of a movie. I thought it was his best work.
I think he is just saying that working with a poor script is much harder than working with a great one.
So if you make a bad script bearable, you’ve done better work than say doing Shakespeare and making it good.