Right, but my point is that “playing a character” is just one part of acting, and not the most important part. Much more important is being able to sell your lines.
I think the phrase we are looking for here is “limited range.”
I think JJ went straight into modeling after high school. Then into acting. She never went to drama school & still insists that she doesn’t need any training.
Yes, limited…
I am willing to bet you large sums of money that if I put you in front of a camera gave you a script and asked you to play the character as yourself you wouldn’t be half as compelling as she is on Mad Men. If you are I will help you get an agent on top of the money.
Even if she doesn’t know what she is doing, why it works, or how to translate that to other roles she knocks the role of Betty out of the park. It’s possible that it is all good direction, but I have worked with a lot of talented actors who couldn’t get out of their own way enough to take good direction, so even that is impressive.
It’s a results based art form. It doesn’t matter if you are limited if you do that one thing well. Look at Clint Eastwood.
I loved Pirate Radio, but I never noticed that it had January Jones.
Exactly. Acting with a limited range and being entirely unable to act are two different things. Julianne Moore demonstrates this in Boogie Nights. She convincingly portrays the character of Amber Waves, and also shows how Amber Waves is unable to pull off a convincing performance when she’s on film.
She is the new bride of one of the DJs who comes out to live on the boat.
I don’t think this is true. I myself find it extremely difficult to “be myself” on stage. The words aren’t mine, so how am I supposed to “be myself”? For me, it’s impossible. For some people, there’s at least one way (whether it’s “themselves” or not) which they are able to be on stage and appear natural.
And that–just being able to play a single role successfully–is already doing more than what a lot of people are capable of.
As Betty Draper, she’s never convinced me of anything other than the ability to wear 1960s fashion really, really well. The very few times that Betty is supposed to be anything other than a moving set piece, I don’t think she pulls it off.
She was also a guest star on L&O (who wasn’t) where she showed the same “range.”
Your real name wouldn’t happen to be Glen Bishop, would it?
My friend was an extra on Mad Men and while she had nothing but amazing things to say about the rest of the cast, she did mention that JJ was a royal bitch IRL (though perhaps that’s her “method”, Lol)
I noticed late last night that the aforementioned Swedish Auto was on Sundance in the middle of the night. So I went to check when it, or her other movies, would be playing next so people could maybe judge for themselves. And wow, she was in many more things that will be airing than I would have guessed. (Several of which I had seen but hadn’t noted her being in.)
So, watch some of these and judge for yourself:
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights various TMC channels. Okay maybe you can skip this one.
Bandits also on various TMC channels. Small role, not one of Bruce Willis’s best films.
Anger Management on Starzk and Encore. Oh boy, another bad one.
Pirate Radio on various HBO channels. Not a great film, but better than the above.
Law & Order this Friday, 16th, at 8pm. Sometimes even great actors do badly as guest stars on TV shows. L&O type shows tend to reflect this a lot.
American Wedding in the dead of the night, early next Sunday am on TBS. Another winner.
And now for the must see “movie” w/JJ in a small role:
Love’s Enduring Promise a Hallmark channel movie next Sat. afternoon. It stars Katherine Heigl so you know it’s great. (I’ve actually “watched” this. Took maybe 15 minutes to get thru thanks to my DVR’s ff button.)
So the X-Men movie (87% RT) is sort of a fluke. Maybe she should stick to doing things with “Men” in the title.
:D. Just saw this.
I have a thing about acting. I am not an actor, but am a trained director and acting coach (trained not working) and I get frustrated when I see arguments like the one presented in this thread.
While acting critique has some subjective elements to it, there are a whole lot of things you can judge objectively and none of them require you to look at an actor’s body of work to do so. So what I’d she hasn’t ever done any other work you think is good. If she is doing s good job on the show you actually watch her in that’s all that matters.
If you want to argue that she sucks on Mad Men that is a different argument, but the argument this thread is presenting is like saying American Graffiti was a terrible movie because Star Wars episode 1 blew chunks and they were both made by the same writer/director. Judge each work or art in its own merits.
Here’s a counter-example: Jessica Lange.
I remember back when she made her debut in King Kong. There were people who thought she was a bad actress because of that part. But what they didn’t realize is that she was actually a good actress who was playing a character who was a bad actress.
I haven’t seen the Jessica Lang King Kong since I was really little, so I am not really able to speak with authority but I would argue that if she didn’t make that clear then she failed in her primary responsibility as an actor for that part. Making the audience understand the character is really important.
Now, I don’t remember this particular role so it is possible she did this brilliantly and the general public just assumed she was crap without putting any thought into it. I see that happen all the time. But typically critics and other actors won’t be confused.
Her SNL (which I do consider a metric of acting ability- even if the skit’s not funny how well you act it is important) was painful. Everything I’ve seen her in she played Betty Draper. She’s several times said that her ex, master thespian Ashton Kutcher, told her she had no acting talent (she was p.o.d and “I guess I showed him” when she said it). Works perfectly for Betty Draper but I can’t imagine her career going far on anything that isn’t a Betty Draper clone.
Lange is wildly uneven. I’ve seen her in movies where she was memorably awful- Leonard Pinth Garnell should have been introducing her- Blue Skies, the movie she won the Oscar for, is probably the worst Oscar winning performance I’ve ever seen. I’ve also seen her when she was phenomenally good- her supporting role in Grey Gardens was wonderful.
The ability to perform well
- in a comedy
- in sketch comedy which has it’s own quirks
- live
- with little rehearsal
5)with little to no direction
is a totally different skill set than the ability to perform well in a scripted 1 hour drama. Doing well on SNL has more to do with being personally affable than anything else. The hosts, for the most part, aren’t really acting, they are just reacting. The regulars are, but they are in different circumstances.
I disagree. A really great actress playing the role of a bad actress would convince you she was a bad actress. If you could see through it and tell she was just playing a bad actress, then her acting wasn’t as good.
The paradox is that a really great actress playing the part of a bad actress and a really bad actress not acting at all give the same performance.
No…there are still choices to be made and evaluated. Again I haven’t seen the movie recently enough to know but if the role is to play overblown (for example) there should still be a real character underneath making those choices. It just gives a more layered performance. If you are working in a modern realist style (as 99% of Hollywood movies are) you should always be grounded in that reality of the character, even if that character is playing another character.
We may be talking about different things though. Can you give me another example of the same thing?
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is a totally different skill set than the ability to perform well in a scripted 1 hour drama. Doing well on SNL has more to do with being personally affable than anything else. The hosts, for the most part, aren’t really acting, they are just reacting. The regulars are, but they are in different circumstances.
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SNL is scripted, not improv. They do rehearse the sketches and in fact at least one of Jones’ was on film rather than live. Most good actors are good on SNL as well, and you don’t get much less affable in person than Steve Martin (who’s famously very serious when not in character) yet he’s always good on the show. Plus what made her a bad SNL host (the inability to do much beside walk across a stage and occasionally change expressions) is what makes her bad in everything.