I was just researching a few DVD’s that I plan on buying soon, and I got to thinking about something. One of the DVD’s that I plan on picking up this week is Pulp Fiction: Collector’s Edition, and the other one that I really want to pick up is Dances With Wolves: Special Edition.
Now, both of these films are without a doubt classics, with great performances by two of the main stars, John Travolta and Kevin Costner. Both of these guys have stared in a number of great classic films, which leaves me to wonder just why in the world so many of their films bomb, or their performances just stink. That leads to this question…
…who do you feel is the greatest “inconsistent” actor/actress of all time? Not just in terms of the film’s success which they are a part of, but also how well their films do as a whole.
Sam beat me to it, but Micael Caine is the king of this thread. This is the guy who missed out on accepting his Oscar so he could finish filming Jaws 4.
michael madsen. hes excellent in some, ie reservoir dogs and sucky in allsorts of straight to video crap.
also, keifer sutherland
charlie sheen - platoon, everthing else, bad
bruce willis
also de niro tends to do a lot of ‘this will pay for a new mansion type roles’ where he coasts through - rocky + bullwinkle, 15 mins, frankenstein - what the hell was he thinking…?
I’ll second Charlie Sheen. And I’ll add Robin Williams - he’s one of the most talented actors out there, but recently his movies haven’t been doing very well.
Blasphemy! His movies may not have been great but his performances were consistant. Folks like The ever wooden Costner or the Flakey Travolta can sometimes pull out a good performance but you can see them at their worst and it isn’t just the film that stinks it is the performance!
I think that quite a few of these guys aren’t that great. But when they land a script which is great, they sparkle. I honestly don’t think Travolta is a better actor than Bruse Willis. Travolta might get a bit more cred, but he’s been in some truly awful movies. If Tarrantino hadn’t used him in Pulp Fiction, he’d be making “Look who’s talking now, pt8” straight for dust collection in a Blockbuster store. Or doing duest spots in sitcoms.
I had an idea about starting a thread “which major movie stars could manage playing theatre on a stage?” Many of the names that pop up here are people I have serious doubt about.
Well, I think we need to decide if by “inconsistent” we mean the actor’s performance or the quality of his movie. Michael Caine has been in some of the best AND worst movies ever, but Caine himself is always pretty good. Even in a bad movie he puts on a good performance.
For acting performance inconsistency, Al Pacino is the unquestioned up-and-down king of all time. Sometimes he’s utterly brilliant; sometimes he’s just atrocious. In “Heat,” he managed to be brilliant AND terrible in the same movie; in one scene he’d be fantastic, and in the next he’d be terrible.
lopez. decent in out of sight, unwatchable in anything else shes ever been in.
you couldnt physically force me to watch enough or the wedding planner.
and winona ryder- heathers + edward scissorhands vs all her other performances
with a question of consistency, how about actors that are absolutely consistent in everything they do-ie kevin spacey, sam l jackson. theyre great actors no doubt, but you know exactly what your getting if you go see a film their in. it does what it says on the tin.
i also agree with the script point of some will shine depending on whose words theyre saying, eg travolta
and some are absolute embarassments in everything, ie madonna and demi moore.
uma thurmans a good case in point of inconsistency though.
and eddie murphy.
trading places vs pluto nash anyone?
Richard Burton did some real slumming in his time—and I mean quality of his performances as well as his films.
Of course there were some performers—Laurence Olivier and Norma Shearer come to mind—who were terrific in drama but who never should have touched comedy with a ten-foot pole.
If you’re a character actor and aren’t typecast into playing the same role over and over, you’re going to have great performances and bad ones, because audiences don’t necessarily have a preconceived notion of how good you should be. People know how good Harrison Ford is, and he almost always satisfies. Someone like William H. Macy is frequently good, but because he’s so ubiquitous - such is the lot of the good character actor - that he’s bound to have been in some bad movies.
