Which actor has been getting by too long by playing themselves in every movie.

(Yes, I know this thread is built for copy cats)

n/t

He always plays an unkempt, acidic asshole. But there is always a likeable wink and a sparkle to it.

I've always found something likeable in the characters he's played over the years even though he's almost always played compromised characters, at best...or an axe wielding fiend...or maybe the devil himself. There was still that wink and sparkle.

Not in The Departed though. That was just pure, non-sparkling acidic asshole.

It's the only role I've ever seen Nicholson in where I was totally repulsed by the character from the moment he appeared.

I think his castmate Ray Winstone would have been better in the role. Or Colm Meany.

But he played it as completely unlikeable that time. I'm really not sure how he flipped that switch.

and he also did come off even more goatish than usual

because I've never found Nicholson to be likable.

I don't like him, never have.

Every movie of his I've seen, has been him playing the same character.

Could be he has some where he doesn't - I haven't seen many of his films - because I don't like him.

:shrug:

he can step outside of himself and turn in a stunning performance.

And was definitely against type.

He's not an actor, he just gets paid to play one in movies...
again and again and again.

And again and again and.....

Seriously, there's something very ODD going on there.

As an actor, he follows the dictum of Dirty Harry in "Magnum Force": 'A man has got to know his limitations'. He does, and he exploits them brilliantly.

I mean,Is he that handsome?

I mean he is pretty much the same character as in Kelso from That 70's Show is very similar to the characters he plays in Just Married and Dude Where's My Car?. However he portrayed different characters in The Butterfly Effect and The Guardian imo.

almost always plays himself.

That he was the only entertaining aspect of Tropic Thunder, upsets.

Which one of his films did he play the Scientologist wackjob? :shrug:

Top Gun
The Color of Money
Mission Impossible
and, a bunch where I can picture the movie, but am currently forgetting the title (the boxing movie, the bartender movie, etc)

:puke:

He does have flashes of brilliance, but to quote from one of his better roles, Mugatu: "They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

My favorite Will Ferrell movie. I do understand the complaints of him based on movies such as Night at the Roxbury and many others where he plays a silly character. Though Anchorman, Elf, Talladega Nights, and movies where he played a supporting role such as Old School made me laugh.

because that character always makes me laugh.

Chimpy, and the character he plays in all his movies. His Chimpersonation was great though. SNL should have paid him whatever he wanted to stick with the show as long as that dumb son of a monkey was in the White House, as the other guys never portrayed the dumbass properly.

which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV or elsewhere. (couldn't find a link)

Drunken juvenile misogynist? Check one. Check two. Check three.

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... is a one-trick pony, but I haven't seen him in anything for quite a while.
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Maybe he's grown as an artist.
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And Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood can go on playing themselves
in HUNDREDS of more movies as far as I'm concerned.
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with your last sentence.

Matt played the clueless principal in Election.

That's a role about as anti Ferris Bueller as you can get.

he is not quite the good guy
and Tracy Flick is not quite the villain

A really smart movie.

Although that was mostly brilliant casting to put Ferris Bueller in the "beleaguered high school authority" role.

:D

In "Election", he plays the very kind of schmuck that he warned his audience about in "Bueller".

"Glory" was a fantastic turn for him. That came on the heels of "Bueller" and showed he was ready to go beyond snarky teen roles.

pretty funny film featuring Brando goofing on his past roles.


hated Ferris Bueller but this one I like.

resemble each other in the least. I think he was very good as Jesse James in an excellent film. But I prefer Pitt in comic roles, like "Snatch". You might not like Pitt, but I disagree that he's the same in every movie.

that was a terrible movie all around. Although Pitt was pretty terrible.

Instead of whatever crappy version you watched.

The Coens' film is brilliant.

And I watched it because it was a Coen film. I was horrifically disappointed.

second viewing turned my head around. :-)

Must be because he is the most blatant not-actor around at the moment.

he's admitted straight up in interviews that he isn't madly in love with acting, doesn't do it for the art- he just got a job doing it one day, people kept on hiring him and paying him more and more money, and he thinks it's fun.

I actually think that's pretty f'ing cool.

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...and amazing in "Wild at Heart".
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M-m-m-m-m, Laura Dern. Lula, where have you BEEN all my life?!?!?
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That's just wrong...ok?

You just can't stand there and piss with your post on The Godfather

No hard feelings though.

Sleep well.

:hi:

Really.

Everything's OK between us.

Recently, anyway--he's done some great work in his career, though.

among many other actors. At one point, while discussing The Iceman Cometh, Pacino gave an excerpt of one of the play's soliloquies. It was very brief, and he was simply sitting in a chair, rather than playing the role on a stage, and I swear that it might have been the finest performance I've ever seen onscreen. It was astonishing, and it came out of nowhere, and it blew me away.

He was also excellent in Looking for Richard.

He's commonly lampooned because his temper-tantrum performances are such an easy target, but he's truly an amazing actor.

Unless being a shirtless, charming moron counts as acting.

Why the FUCK anyone thought he could pass as Batman just boggles the mind.

Everyone was bad in that one but I did think Uma Thurman did a pretty good job. Not good enough to save that movie though.

Of course, it was basically the same role he had in the Terminator movies, but that fit.

The "too many lights" Batmobile was easily the worst prop in the movie. I liked the one from the first movie the best. THAT was a car I could drive!

Up in the Air was a wonderful movie! I can't take my eyes off of him. I love his every little mannerism...

So there!

When I'd only seen him on ER I though he was playing someone with borderline mental issues with brilliance.

As time goes on? It appears he has those nervous tics honestly

If we get the joke, then we can be comically realistic, if ultimately tragic. He knows it is all fluff, our insecurities, our pretensions, our materialism and our stupidities. I think he is always aware of this "human comedy" and wary of taking it all too seriously...

different from his Up in the Air role. He portrays Clayton as someone who must desperately cover up if not contain his gambling addiction. His Up in the Air character has lived a life of running away from his family and any close relationship with a lover, but he becomes transformed by family and the warmth of his relationship with his newfound casual lover, only to be smashed on the rocks of disappointment.

He does all this intelligently and his intelligence guides these movies --they are authentic and effective. Take for example the scene in Up in the Air when he, his lover and his young protege have drinks in a bar after the protege's fiance has brutally broken off their relationship via email on her cell phone. Watch that scene carefully for its pure artistry in dialog, body language and props (the young woman has a gaudy,frothy tall drink and the 40 somethings are drinking Scotch out of squat barware).

Similarly, when he discovers his lover is married with kids and only wants him as a "parenthesis" in her life, he stands there in the swirling snow stunned. Your heart goes out to him instantly because he is facing a moment that so many of us in our lives have had to face: rejection. Yet he cannot break down...

I "read" movies carefully and love really good ones, the real stuff. I have never found Clooney untrue to his character, or to his movie's authenticity.

:wtf:

And yes, I've seen "Burn After Reading". He almost pulled off a unique character in that one, but not quite.

But I try to see most of them. I even liked him in "The Men Who Stare at Goats."

n/t

:)

Totally agree. I haven't actually believed in any character of his since the Bill & Ted movies, and I haven't enjoyed his performance in anything since My Own Private Idaho.

But I love his character so I don't mind

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...in "True Romance".
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Two of the absolute FINEST examples of acting ever -- from
two actors in one scene!!!
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Or chack him out in "At Close Range" -- a bizarre but brilliant interpretation
of the role.
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No matter how iconic, I don't think his consistent quirkiness (not an oxymoron
in his case) has ever distracted me from the movie.
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with a dead horse.


Probably the flies and the stink...


mark

David had to work with some very good actors on that episode-like Marg Helgenberger-and for a few scenes...he ALMOST WAS ACTING!!! They MADE HIM LOOK BETTER or embarassed him into actually working, I am not sure which but he had a few moments there...


mark

Hands down.

Denny Crane didn't resemble James Tiberius Kirk at all.

Though I will concede that TJ Hooker was essentially the Captain in a bluer uniform and a lower tech sidearm with a vehicle that couldn't do warp speed. And Adrian Zmed was no Spock!

or maybe that credit goes to David E Kelley.

Never was a fan of the Shat until 'Boston Legal'.

Mr. Flat Affect.

but I must admit, 3000 Miles To Graceland was different than any role I've seen him play.

Mr. Brooks and A Perfect World?

same same same

Maybe she should do a movie with her dad, Victor Kiriakis.

Does anyone in this thread understand the craft of acting?

Has anyone in here done it professionally? Do we have hidden celebrities on DU?

Or are you all just armchair critics who seem to know the job of the person doing it better than they do?

Did anyone claim any of what you are asking?


:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

Of course, I was mostly watching Jake Gyllenhaal in that one...

That's not their fault, that's the way Hollywood works. Writers write characters with a certain actor in mind, casting directors cast based on the personality and traits of the actor instead of the character, and directors tell the actor to bring out that certain "Johnny Depp" or "Tom Cruise" or whomever quality.

That's Hollywood, not the actors, and that complaint has been around since the oldest days. Bogart, Tracy, and Hepburn all talked about it.

Look at people in this thread. Tom Cruise? Watch "Magnolia" or "Born on the Fourth of July" or that crap thing he did with Ben Stiller. WIll Smith? Watch "Ali" or "Happyness." Matthew McConnehy (I'm too lazy to look up his name again, and too apathetic to memorize the spelling)? "A Time to Kill," or "Lone Star." He can act, they just make more money fitting him into one role. Same with most people on that list. For most celeb actors, they've had to go through the lower ranks, work in commercials and little theater and a slew of other gigs that they'd have never made it through if they couldn't act. Then they hit one role that makes money, and every director wants the character they played in that role. They aren't hired for who they can pretend to be--anyone can pretend to be someone else. They are hired for that one role, and often that one role isn't even who they are.

The only American actors I can think of who get hired to play someone other than their stock role are DeNiro, Streep, Pacino when he's lucky (and that's mostly because he forces them to let him do stage sometimes), and now and then Johnny Depp (who has two stock rolls--he either plays himself, or he plays a wild cartoon-esque cutout with cute facial moves and no emotional range). There are probably some character actors I'm forgetting, and most good actors have a good roll now and then, but for the most part, they all play themselves because that's what Hollywood wants them to play.

British film is different, until the actor is brought into American film, usually. Like Hugh Grant. Or Sean Connery. Crappy actor--Ian Flemming called him a stunt man with lines--but he wins an Oscar in Hollywood (playing his stock character in an average movie just because he smirks well and can shift quickly to a razor-sharp angry speech) and becomes a legend. Take away that one role, and you have the goof from Darby O'Gill and the Little People--and that's pretty much James Bond with smilier lines, anyway.

Most of the actors who can actually transform into another character are British (at least in English language films). Emma Thompson, Geoffrey Rush (for my money the best actor in film right now), Tom Wilkerson, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman (well, Australian, but still), Ian McKlellan, etc.

In short, it isn't that those actors can't act, it's that American audiences can't tell the difference. It's all hamburgers and french fries to us.

Our education system sucks when it comes to the arts, while other nations focus more on them, so our nation is less educated and demands less. We are better at explosions, though. :)

}(

I'm sure they don't want to be thought of as British Actors!

I meant to lump Cate and Nicole together (although Nicole was born in Hawaii and raised there until four, so technically she's as American as President Obama :rofl: ) as Australian, but my obscure grammatical format wasn't as clear as I thought it was. Didn't know Rush was Australian.

They probably don't care what people think they are, as long as people think of them. ;)

In America we have personalities. In the UK actors study their craft. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part that is the case.

What you said about Hollywood is sometimes true in the UK. Case in point: the recent Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. Had he not just hit with Ironman, some other, better suited actor might have gotten that role. If anyone doesn't believe me, just google any of the Guy Ritchie interviews and he even states he wanted RDjr for that part because of his Tony Stark. It's a clear case of making the role fit the actor, instead of the other way around. Thus, we got a short Sherlock Holmes that looks like an unmade bed who mumbles his lines.

All generalizations have limits. Even this one. :)

Always thought he was a crappy actor.

NOT

I don't even know who Ben Kingsley is.

He's that good.

Whoa... Talk about an actor who takes the easy roles...

because I agree

I guess if you're in a new film every two weeks, you don't have that much of a chance to go method.

When I had Netflix, I would pick my favorite actors and try to do a marathon of all their movies. Lets just say the project ended with MM.

He's not actually in those 18-20 movies. They just digitally insert his performance as Mr. Blond into whatever film is currently featuring him. Saves time and money and everyone's happy!

Actually, now that I think of it, I should note that his Mr. Blond was actually a reprisal of half a dozen Michael Madsen roles prior to Reservoir Dogs, but that's the role that everyone remembers!

Plays the stoner, whether he's a cop, a robber, a psychopath, an uncle, or Keanu Reeves' cell phone caller.

We have our bearded, serious Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting), and our shaved comic Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire).

Lately, he's mixed it up with his sicko at the photo mart, or the talk show host who was the victim of a prank (forgot those two movies).

Patch Adams, Bicentennial Man, What Dreams May Come, He bursts into tears every few minutes.

Wolf

Well, does anyone even give a shit about Stallone anymore?

Always seems to play the frat-boy type who hasn't grown up even though he's in some sort of relationship. I just watched "Four Christmases" over the weekend and Vaughn played the same character starting in "Swingers" (the only time he was actually cool playing that role) all the way thru "The Wedding Crashers", "The Break-up", and "Old School".

Gets paid millions to make shitty movies and it's bascially the same performance in every one.

Could never understand the acclaim. She's the exact same person in every movie.

Not a good actress at all. She totally did not deserve that Oscar!