Jonathan Harris as Dr. Smith.
Jim Carrey’s career.
Gerard Butler can actually be restrained (too much so in Phantom of the Opera, IMHO), but he’s definitely over the top in scenery chewing in the wonderfully awful Gods of Egypt.
To be honest, the movie really calls for Overblown Special Effects and Overdone Acting. It’d be unwatchable otherwise.
He apparently stayed in character while filming My Left Foot, to the point of suffering broken ribs from being hunched over for that long – you know, while getting fed in between takes, since he couldn’t do it himself. And for The Crucible, he of course didn’t shower during the making of the film – because there was no indoor plumbing in the little 1600s-type house he (a) lived in during the production, after it was (b) built with his own two hands. Though he apparently got plenty of cold water thrown on him when he was living in a jail cell for In The Name Of The Father.
They say he got so into character as Hamlet that he saw his father’s ghost.
Well, that’s okay, but he’d better not thrust a sword through a curtain.
I’m just saying, we could really clean up this city if they’d just cast him as Batman.
I thought Brad Pitt was scene stealing in Twelve Monkeys.
Jude Law is over the top in the current series of The Young Pope.
in particular Jeremy Irons in the Dungeons and Dragons movie… so very over the top there, it was the best thing about it.
Going to put in Christopher Plummer in Star Trek VI… “Cry HAAAVOOC!!! And let slip! The Dogs! Of War!” and so on…
What strikes me as kind of interesting is, David Suchet would spend the majority of a typical POIROT episode doing the opposite of this: he’s subtle and subdued, patient and polite – a quiet sort of chap who chooses his words very carefully. Oh, sure, there’s some warmth in his voice, or a wistful look in his eye, but so what?
Until the summation scene, at which point, holy crap: he’s theatrical, all showy gestures and loud accusations shot though with emotion; he’s triumphant to the point of sneering, he’s actually kind of insulted that you thought this would fool him, he’s glaring as if he’s genuinely angry; the mask is off, and the man is center stage.
Some great ones have already been mentioned. In fact, Lithgow in Buckaroo Banazi came to my mind just from seeing the title of the thread. He was also great in Third Rock From the Sun.
Eli Wallach is absolutely brilliant in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; he’s not quite as manic as some of the others here, but he totally owns that movie. And I’ve seen him play very mild-mannered characters, including films from the same era. I almost can’t believe it’s the same guy.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was just on TV the other day, and there’s some first-class chewing going on in that; Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, especially Ethel Merman are standouts. Buddy Hackett is admirably restrained.
I’ve read that it wasn’t really his choice to play it that way. Kubrick had trouble getting Scott to play his role broadly enough. He apparently asked Scott to do a few takes with a very over-the-top performance to get the feel for it, but promised the actor that he wouldn’t use them. Turned out he did put them in the film and Scott was rather angry about it. I don’t like to see someone manipulated like that, but damn if they didn’t make a masterpiece.
I’ve only seen Vernon Wells in two movies, but he was utterly over-the-top outstanding in both of them: The mohawk bad guy from The Road Warrior, and the main bad guy “Bennet” from Commando.
Jimmy Cagney was great at this.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan in The Walking Dead
I know a lot of people here don’t like Nicholas Cage and Kevin Costner, but I think there style of acting works well for the movies they star in. Strangely although I usually like Al;an Rickman as a villain, his acting as the sherriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood was so over the top I hated it.
I’ve pretty much lost interest in Johnny Depp’s schtick at this point, but I have to admit he was amazing the first time Captain Jack Sparrow swaggered through a scene in best making-it-up-as-he-goes-along fashion, often amused and routinely delivering his lines as if somewhere between “drunken storyteller” and “cocky swindler” – or, for that matter, “dripping with sarcasm”, or “hey, wait; is he actually crazy?”
Peter O’Toole as Henry II in Becket and The Lion in Winter. But in O’Toole’s defense, Henry was like that.
O’Toole got nominated for an Oscar by playing a scenery-chewing actor – excuse me; he’s not an actor; he’s a movie star! – in MY FAVORITE YEAR.
You have to admit that Toshiro Mifune chewed a lot of scenery in The Seven Samurai. It was necessary that he did so, as he was trying to bluff and braggadocio his way into the rank of samurai. But he was often over the top even by western standards and got a bit wearing at times.
Brad Dourif has been mentioned, but not in connection with Dune–which is a motherlode of scenery-chewing. Of course that’s basically what you get with almost anything by David Lynch.
Ben Kingsley is fully capable of masticating the décor, as he did to good effect in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. Jeremy Irons basically stood back in deference, in that one.
Lost4life mentioned Calculon: Maurice LaMarche is LaMaster of voice work and chews (scenery) magnificently.
And in the Classics division, Herbert Lom’s work in the Pink Panther movies deserves mention. He spent a lot of those performances doing the Slow Burn, but he did those slow burns very theatrically.
(My first thought on reading the thread title: Nicol Williamson’s Merlin in Excalibur, mentioned upthread.)
Serial offender - Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast.