since Amy Irving has been mentioned I’ll raise you Kate Capshaw.
I haven’t seen every Clint Eastwood movie ever made, but I’ve also never seen Clint Eastwood sit like a blackhole of suck in the middle of a film, either. Look at Groundhog Day. Bill Murray is awesome in it. There are great lines. It’s a really charming film that even manages to be a bit deep. And at the very center of the movie is Andie McDowell. She is Phil’s main motivation. He isn’t freed from his hell until he learns to be the kind of a man that she could fall in love with. Except…there’s never any reason to ever believe that he would fall in love with her. It’s not because of the script. On paper, she’s a fine lady. But Andie McDowell is so expressionless, so utterly without charm, that it’s hard to believe anybody would even befriend her. She delivers her lines without any real emotion. She laughs without joy. Her eyes are vacant. She always has the sense of being somewhere else.
Have we all forgotten about Katie Holmes? And Tara Reid??
My buddy’s brother’s ex-girlfriend. She was pretty hot when he was dating her.
Never seen her act, but I like her song “Bloomsbury Blue”.
Apart from that, this post has just been a transparent excuse for namedropping.
To be fair, that’s the one really Wall-Banging appearance of hers I’ve seen. Then again, she’s not an actress I seek out.
Um…I liked her in Kill Bill…
And I can’t stand Andi MacDowell in anything I’ve seen her in - even adverts.
This long with no mention of Juliette Lewis?
Hmm. The only films I recall watching with her in them, they were not serious dramatic roles.
Is there a chance that she has not been given a chance to show her potential?
He loved me when he was an underwear model. We’ve grown apart since. 
I’m pretty sure Rebcca Pidgeon was already working as an actress when Mamet met her and started directing her in a play.
Pia Zadora’s hubby bought her a career.
But I like Rebecca Pidgeon. I think she is great. And it has nothing to do with the fact that inexplicably turns me on.
Now Julliette Lewis? SHE sucks.
Clint Eastwood should never have been given any awards. Whatever good works he did could never make up for Sondra Locke. She was terrible .She could not be explained.
I’ll say the same thing I said about Soderbergh - Darryl Hannah’s performance in the Kill Bill movies is a testament to Quentin Tarantino. When I see an actor giving a performance that’s several notches above their average, I assume it was the director who was able to bring it out of them. (George Lucas is an example of the opposite effect - a director who can take good actors and get a mediocre performance out of them.)
But Pidgeon’s husband has sustained hers. I think Lissener’s argument fails to hold water because she (unlike any other principle actors in his films, including Crouse) has been virtually unemployable in the film industry despite making movies for Mamet for over a decade. Does she only want to work with him exclusively? Or does nobody else want to touch her?
Ditto her TV output. I haven’t seen her in The Shield but her only other major contribution to the small screen is in The Unit, another Mamet production.
I don’t think she’s as bad as everyone makes out (I found her sweet in The Winslow Boy), but let’s be honest: The only reason anyone is familiar with her body of work is because 90% of it has been working for her husband. She’s hardly demonstrated a degree of skill to sustain a non-nepotistic career of even marginal visibility.
As for Andie McDowell, she was fantastic in sex, lies so that’s how I choose to remember her.
And Sofia Coppola gets a pass because she’s not an actress, she’s a Coppola, and has never shown any interest in actually maintaining an acting career outside of doing favors for her family.
Daryl Hannah, though. Her KB performance was fine but nowhere close to the Andie/sex lies league necessary to redeem a truly horrifying career.
Considering she’s playing a news producer snow-stuck in rural PA, I submit this is her most believable role.
Until you find a definitive answer for this question, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt; it’s quite possibly she does only want to work for her husband. I’m sure neither of them really *needs *to work. Anyway, every performance I’ve ever seen her in has struck me as pitch perfect, with exactly the nuances that Mamet seems to be asking of her. Again, watch *Oleanna *and imagine it without the Mamet context, and compare the acting styles; definitely Pidgeonesque.
Agree with Lissener that The Pidgeon’s performance in The Shield was absolutely fine. Fine in a way that someone like Andie MacDowell would never manage. I do find her appalling in stuff like Heist or The Spanish Prisoner, though. Mamet’s style just weighs heavy on her it seems. I mean the Heist in particular was a giganitc ham-fest really, but everyone else in it managed to pull it off OK.
I loved The Spanish Prisoner. I found ALL the performances to be deadpan, especially Steve Martin’s.
OMG, I think I just cracked the Da Vinci Code: maybe Mamet requires that flat, affectless style because he’s trying to keep his wife employed!!!
We’re through the looking-glass, people…
Also, just FYI, the OP should be using worse, not worst. For example: “Rebecca Pidgeon is the worst actress ever, since she’s even worse than Michael Michele.”
Wait, that reminds me. Two words, people: Rain. Phoenix.
Thread over.
I thought she was pretty decent in KILL BILL 2.