I’ve recently seen the term “scenery chewing” in lots of movie reviews. It seems to be applied mostly to bad actors. Can someone define “scenery chewing”? Where does this term come from? And if you want to give a few examples of a scenery chewing performace, I’d appreciate that, too!
I’ve never heard it specifically defined, but I think I got the basic meaning from the context in which it is typically used.
I think it describes overacting, or hogging the camera’s attention with your performance, thus making everything else in the camera’s frame (the “scenery”) irrelevant.
I might be wrong, though. That’s just my interpretation. It’s a stupid, overused phrase, in my opinion.
It is kind of a dumb phrase, but it still gets used, so…
Basically, it refers to an actor who will do absolutely anything to retain the audience’s attention, no matter how ludicrous, including ripping down the walls and chewing on the edges. An excellent example of a good scenery-chewing performance – in that it’s appropriate to the film – is Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonian Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He alternates between growling, hissing, spitting, etc. his dialogue, makes faces, gestures hugely, and so on. One could conjecture he didn’t want to disappear behind Shatner’s scenery-chewing, of course. 
There’s an apocryphal story about some famous actor – possibly Humphrey Bogart, though I don’t remember exactly – actually chewing the scenery on some movie, thus giving rise to the phrase. Like most tales that posit an actual event as the basis for a colorful expression, it’s probably bunk.
Think “Al Pacino whenever the camera is pointed at him”
Yeesh, with the hollering…
I just wanted to amend this statement a bit:
“Al Pacino whenever the camera is pointed at him ever since the Academy gave him an Oscar for doing it in Scent of a Woman.”
With the possible exception of Pacino in Donnie Brasco and Glenngarry Glenn Ross (the latter, I think, was the same year as SofaW, so maybe that doesn’t count).
Jack Nicholson can also be good at doing this, such as his performance as the Joker in Batman.
Or any Jim Carrey movie from Ace Ventura until The Truman Show, when it finally seemed he learned the meaning of the phrase “less is more.” Then he reverted again for The Grinch.
Oh, please. You haven’t seen scenery chewing until you see John Travolta in “Battlefield Earth.” Why do you think the sets on the film are all ruins?
But the problem with that is it would involve me having to watch Battlefield Earth.
BTW- just to share…
One of my favorite line of a review came from a review of Battlefied Earth. I don’t remember if it was the local paper or Entertainment Weekly, but it read along the lines of:
“Watching Battlefield Earth does for Scientology what watching the Pope spontaneously combust during Easter mass would do for Catholocism.”
I have seen Battlefield Earth (someone else paid for it). This movie just begs for the MST3K treatment but it does have a great ending.
All you need to see is the previews.
"There’s an apocryphal story about some famous actor – possibly Humphrey Bogart, though I don’t remember exactly – actually chewing the scenery on some movie, thus giving rise to the phrase. "
—It predates that by a good 100 years. “Scenery-shewing” goes back to the 19th century and the travelling mellerdrammers. The only way to come across to a rowdy audience in those gaslit stage days was to ACT (it was also a good way to outshine your costars). So people who acted, umm, a little too enthusiastically were accused of chewing the scenery.
. . . Next week, “East Lynne” . . .
“Shewing?” Oy. I guess that’s what you did on The Ed Sullivan Show . . .
Jermey Irons for an Oscar (heck, a Nobel and a Pullitzer too) for scenery chewing in “Dungeons & Dragons”
Brian