I’m looking for your opinions as to the most under-appreciated acting job done by either a star or supporting actor/actress in a movie.
This is a performance that made you say “wow, that was a pretty good job”, but the role itself, and the actor/actress was ignored when the award season came around.
The rule is, the person cannot have won a major award, either an Oscar or golden globe or anything else for this particular performance. And they also cannot be one of the nominations. That’s right. They were completely ignored.
Feel free to discuss anyone else’s nomination, whether you agree or disagree and why.
My first nominee?
Vincent D’Onofrio - Best Supporting Actor, Men In Black. He played Edgar, the bug that took over Edgar the farmer’s body when he went to take a look at it at the crash site.
I think he did an execellent job portraying Edgar, especially the physical acting required after the bug took the body over. He was not only convincing, but he was also hilarious. A grat acting job no matter how you slice it.
Jean Arthur, in Only Angels Have Wings. I still don’t know how she managed to keep her character together, understated, next to Cary Grant in one of his best performances.
She is the heart of that perfect movie, for me, and she wasn’t un-appreciated by me the first few times I saw it. She was, exactly, under-appreciated (again, by me).
@koufax good call on Oldman – I didn’t realize until after the first time I saw True Romance Oldman’s role. He’s mostly the reason I run that flick again sometimes – definitely one of the more entertaining little caricatures in a movie full of them. He’s the Lon Chaney of the 1990s, and now, the Dean of the new century.
Eli Wallach in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He steals the movie, but makes it look easy. It was only when I saw him in something else from the same year that I realized how completely transformed he was as Tuco.
Brilliant. I was also flabbergasted before I knew about him – probably like a lot of Gen X people I grew up with him in TGTBATU on TV showings – seeing him keep coming out of the woodwork in movies where I didn’t have any idea until the credits rolled it was the same cat. The Misfits, I think, was the first one that confused me. Was too young to care about him in the 3rd Godawfulther (not that bad, OK), but he’s about the only reason to watch that one more than once (OK, Pretty Naked Fonda might be a better reason).
You are right – owning every scene with van Cleef and Eastwood, and you have no idea what he’s doing or why or how.
I was going to watch Sister Street Fighter, but maybe you changed my mind, ya magnificent bastard!
Excellent call. I have watched this movie countless times, and Wallach in particular. He is grubby, grimey, and filthy from scene to scene. He wears rings on most of his fingers, and he wears strings around his neck, the most prominent one being for his gun. He plays the part to perfection. He wears the dirt like an extra piece of wardrobe.
And from an acting POV, he is right on target. The most interesting part is beside Eastwood and Van Cleef, everyone spoke another language, so Wallach had to react and exchange lines with people speaking Italian, Spanish, or whatever while speaking his lines in English. Very difficult, and yet he pulls it off. A very overlooked piece of acting. He was also the lead character, as he had both more screen time and lines than Eastwood, even though Clint was listed as the star.
I don’t know if he qualifies. He was nominated for his performance in DDA, and everyone of his films was nominated for Best Picture. Talk about a good luck charm. Too bad he died at 42. Not a bad film in his all too short film career.
As I’ve noted on these boards before… Edward G. Robinson NEVER received a single Academy Award nomination in his entire career (he did get a lifetime achievement Oscar, AFTER he was already dead).
I’d have given him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Cincinnati Kid (his most subtle performance), but he had numerous performances worthy of at least a nomination.
I think Geoffrey Rush was underappreciated for his role in the first “Pirates” movie (only Pirates of the Caribbean movie as faras I’m concerned).
If we can mention tv, John Noble has been criminally underappreciated for his work on the just-ended Fringe.
Elijah Wood was underappreciated as Frodo in the LOTR films. Hard for me to imagine anyone else in the role. He did the very best he could with a character that was poorly rewritten from the books.
Sometimes people can get underappreciated for their acting because they are so good-looking. Keira Knightley is an example of this.
I saw a Zach Braff movie called The Last Kiss a while back. The film itself wasn’t great and wasn’t horrible, but Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson played Braff’s parents who were quietly struggling to hold their loveless marraige together, and they were both absolutely riveting. The movie should have been about them instead of some whiny 20-somethings.
By the same token, though, Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for his performance in Rain Man by tilting his head to one side and staring into the distance while doing the same blandly droning monotone that you – and everyone else – promptly did a quick but dead-on impression of, and promptly got bored with.
How did a repetitive part that’s nine-tenths mechanical get that film an Oscar for Best Picture? How did Levinson win the Oscar for Best Director with an unresponsive leading man who doesn’t much interact with the other characters – and when he does, can simply react in unnatural and off-putting ways?
Near as I can tell, Tom Cruise is doing all the heavy lifting in this one: he’s by turns sarcastic, and earnest, and frustrated, and surprised, and curious, and impressed; he’s trying to be the voice of reason, he can’t help but laugh; he’s the perfect straight man in a stand-up comedy bit, except he’s playing off a robot.
It’s a thankless role, but there’s no movie unless he sounds genuinely emotional while seeming like a regular guy we can readily identify with.
Well, Dustin Hoffman didn’t just tilt his head to one side at stare into the distance. He created a mannerism that everybody wanted to impersonate, and which was instantly recognized when people did.
I read something years ago about a movie I like. The director said that what really made the movie work was that all the actors really seemed to grasp what it was that he was after. That made me think. It would be easy to watch a great movie, like Casablanca, and then go make it. But the people who made Casablanca didn’t have that advantage. They had an idea, then a story, then a script, and a director, actors, etc. I think the hard part mostly takes place in advance, and if you’re really good at it the end result just looks easy.
I was going to name Robinson’s role as the insurance investigator in Double Indemnity. He was probably my favorite thing about that movie, and it’s one of my favorite movies.