I agree with Screeme, I think Keanu Reeves gets a bad rap. He is honestly one of my favorite actors.
Now, this is not to be taken as me being wiseass at all. I am being 100% serious here. Watch The Godfather Part III. Sofia Coppola the absolute worst actor/actress I’ve had had the misfortune to see on screen. I don’t even have to explain it, watch the movie and it will be blatantly obvious what I’m talking about. She’s so bad it’s almost funny. The average Troma extra is Shakespearean compared to her.
You’ve got to be joking. Look up wooden in the dictionary and you’ll find Keanu Reeves picture. He’s as wooden as a pine box, but it doesn’t mean his movies are bad (e.g. The Matrix).
Wooden acting means just reading the lines like a robot, and not being fluent in moving and talking.
There are not 100 waiters who are better actors than Tom Cruise, who unfortunately is popular and thus a poor actor. Watch Rain Man sometime and tell me who had the harder part.
Similarly with Gibson’s portrayal of Hamlet. It was a conscious decision of Zeffirelli/Gibson to not portray Hamlet as the stereotypical self-pitying sad sack of nearly all interpretations. Gibson plays him as a fighter overcome by circumstances. Read Ebert’s review here.
Good point, credit where credit is due. Cruise has done some good work, and Rain Man was among his best. Why the director (Barry Levinson) had the magic touch for that film and not-so-magic touches for other films is a mystery.
My theory is that directors mis-cast Tom Cruise because he’s popular, and most directors don’t know how to work with him. Maybe in Rain Man, Levinson had a light touch with the actors, so Cruise could just be natural. For Cruise to be a good actor he needs roles that suit his personality, but I think the casting directors go all ga-ga when he shows up.
By the way, as someone who used to train actors for a living, I assure you that there ARE 100 waiters who have the talent and training to be equal to many Hollywood stars.
May be true of many Hollywood stars but I was specifically refuting someone’s claim about Tom Cruise who, apart from being a star, has won 2 acting Golden Globes from 5 nominations and has 3 Academy Award nominations.
Charlton Heston is not wooden! Haven’t you ever seen Planet of The Apes? Omega Man? Oh… my… God… He’s chewed up more scenery than Godzilla. Say what you will, but “wooden” isn’t the word for it.
Yes, Heston chews up scenery, but in a watchable way, unlike William Shatner, who has become a parody of himself (which was a parody to begin with). Nicholson also chews up scenery, it’s just he’s good enough that you forget he’s chewing it up.
Costner is the sequoia of acting. Even in his good movies, he’s got the emotional range of a grapefruit. Keanu Reeves isn’t far behind.
To be fair to some of the actors mentioned in this thread, bad acting does not equal wooden acting. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that Schwarzenneger is a good actor, but he isn’t wooden. He showed more emotional range in “Hercules in NY” than Costner has in his career.
Paul Walker, who was the lead in The Fast and the Furious is both wooden and a bad actor. My god, his acting was terrible. He made Vin Diesel sound positively Shakespearean.
To me, “chewing up the scenery” is when an actor dominates the screen, regardless of who or what else is there. Think about Nicholson in “Batman” or “As Good As It Gets”. When he gets going, it’s only him, but in a good way. Or think William Shatner in anything he’s done. He doesn’t want anyone to upstage him, so he overacts and dominates the scene and the screen in a bad way. Tommy Lee Jones tries to chew it up; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Contrast Jones’ ‘Riddler’ to Nicholson’s ‘Joker’. IMO, the latter worked much better, although both are skilled actors in a role that calls for an over-the-top performance.
Think of someone who is so over the top that you can tell he’s acting…aka Pee Wee Herman’s death scene in the movie of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
I dunno, I don’t think Kevin Costner is as wooden as some people say…he’s just a lot more subtle then most actors. Contrast him with William Hurt who is not only wooden in most of his roles but also monotone (Kiss of the Spider Woman is an obvious exception.) Contrast him with Kevin Kline who does many of the same type of rolls and you can see the difference between wooden and watchable…
Keith
P.S. As was said before miscasting can lead to woodeness, if you don’t have the confidence to play the part you are cast in then you won’t pull it off well… (I know this from my bit of experience in amateur theatre…if I am not comfortable it shows…).
“How do you tell”? There’s no great mystery or secret to it. Just watch a movie or play, and ask yourself: does this actor sound natural? Does he sound like a real person? Or does he sound like someone reading lines, mechanically, from a script?
To me, the ultimate in wooden acting was Chuck Norris. In his earliest films, especially, he couldn’t even say “Give me a cup of coffee” as if he meant it. EVERY line he said was in the same lifeless, emotionless monotone.
Obviously, he NEVER became a great actor, but he eventually learned to show a LITTLE personality.
To compare Costner’s emotional range to a grapefruit is to insult grapefruits everywhere.
Then there is the whole field of “coarse acting”, where you purposely chew up the scenery (sometimes literally) to steal attention from the lead actors.
You know what’s really tough to do? I’ll tell ya.
To be a good actor, but to portray wooden acting convincingly. Can’t think of an example – say, Dustin Hoffman playing a character who is doing amateur theatre and can’t act. Maybe “Waiting for Guffman” has such examples. Or “Spinal Tap” in a way.
I’ve noticed that actors often don’t protray news anchors or CNN type reporters very accurately. They’re too lively.
