I have. I’ve been working my way through Denzel Washington’s films and so far nary a stinker. Remarkable. And rare.
I’ve seen all his great films, and all of his very good ones, most several times. Today i saw Roman j. Israel, which has its issues, but by no means a bad movie. Next, the Equalizer. Scraping the bottom of the barrel soon.
Roger Ebert proposed the Stanton-Walsh Rule: “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”
John Cazale? He only appeared in 5 films, and all 5 were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars – and two won.
If you graph a scatter plot of the below data by movie count and average take:
https://www.the-numbers.com/people/records/highav.php
You’ll get a shape that looks a bit like a sideways funnel. It appears that the more movies you make, the harder it is to get above an average of ~$35m per movie.
At 97 movies, Frank Welker has an average of $66m per movie. Other standouts:
I think it’s harder to say with people like Hugo Weaving, Stan Lee, the Harry Potter actors, etc. whether they are people with some special talent for finding good scripts, or they just got lucky by being parts of tentpole series.
Though, in the case of Mr. Welker, he seems to be the long unknown and ultimate emperor of tentpole success.
Wait 'til you get to the anvilicious John Q.
There was James Dean, but he only starred in 3 movies.
So Heart Condition? Virtuosity?
My list of actors who made no, or few bad films include:
Harold Lloyd (made ~200 films, only ~3 were box office failures)
Tom Hanks
Meryl Streep
Joaquin Phoenix
Pauly Shore
Daniel Day-Lewis
Tom Cruise has also been largely successful since the mid-80’s.
I’ve never seen Lions for Lambs, but I did see Jack Reacher 2 and that was one of the few stinkers he is in.
Looking over a list of Robert Duvall’s films, I see a few that I have never heard of, but none that I have heard bad things about.
Also Carbon Copy.
OK, he was young, he needed the money…
The live-action remake of Disney’s Pinocchio was god-awful.
Never saw Death Becomes Her, did you?
It was made in 1992, so we can’t even blame it on her just starting out.
Carrie Henn, who played Newt in Aliens.
Granted, it’s the only movie she’s ever appeared in.
Or Peter Ostrum.
The Equalizer was a well crafted action thriller. He’s done much worse. He’s had some bad movies early on in his career. I don’t think he’s been bad in anything. He’s made the bad movies he’s been in watchable.
Tommy Wiseau
2nded!
I actually like it. It is not one of the best films ever made but Denzel Washington’s and Russell Crowe’s performances elevate the film above crap and it was fairly entertaining.
John Cazale was my example (as stated above).
I saw it in the theatre and I thought it was great.
Death Becomes Her was hilarious.