Actors You Think Are Overrated

[Andara Bledin]

So, since the movies thread is starting to fill up with names of people and not films, I thought I'd go ahead and splinter this off for everybody.

Johnny Depp. Sure, the guy's a good actor with an interesting range of roles, but a good many of us just don't get all the squealing and fainting that goes on around him.

Heath Ledger. His name first showed up in connection with Brokeback Mountain, and his final film was The Dark Knight, which took a different sort of look at the Joker than the first Batman movie. But would people really think so much of him if he hadn't died?

I'm sure there are at least a dozen others that I can't think of right now. I'll be back as they pop into my head.

^-.-^

[mikoyan29]

After Titanic, I would have said Leo but he has since grown on me.

[Ginger Tea]

DeCaprio has grown on me slightly too now hes older, OK I've not seen many of his films as he was, well, DeCaprio.
Shutter Island was a good movie and I didn't mind it was him in it, I may have seen him in something else, but I had an aversion to him for a very long time.

I had to endure Jennifer Aniston in Derailed, mind you I have kinda developed a man crush on Clive Owen due to Sin City and Shootemup, so he saved that film for me.

I already spoke about Heath and the fact I can only name two films of his in the other thread, but my introduction to him was after his death and all the kerfuffle about how great he was an actor, how much of the Joker was his performance and how much the script?

I can't think of many actors that turn me off seeing a movie (bar DeCaprio for most of his career), some like Nicholas Cage, might be in turkeys but I enjoy their performance.

I don't see many Branjolena movies, but off screen I would prefer to see less of them, I think the last Brad movie I saw was Burn after reading, but that was on DVD 6ish months ago and he has been in many movies since that one, I just don't recall seeing any save for Mr and Mrs Smith.
Her on the other hand, wasn't interested in her character in Wanted and outside of gone in 60 seconds I'm at a loss to name a film of hers I've seen. apart from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (only cos I've just remembered she was in it) but she wasn't that great if I forgot about her.

[Andara Bledin]

I already spoke about Heath and the fact I can only name two films of his in the other thread, but my introduction to him was after his death and all the kerfuffle about how great he was an actor, how much of the Joker was his performance and how much the script?

Don't forget the director - a director can make or break a movie.

Her on the other hand, wasn't interested in her character in Wanted and outside of gone in 60 seconds I'm at a loss to name a film of hers I've seen. apart from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (only cos I've just remembered she was in it) but she wasn't that great if I forgot about her.

I've never understood why anyone likes her. *shrug*

^-.-^

[the_std]

I dunno, I believe that Heath Ledger was an appreciably good actor. His first major role, and the one that earned him the adoring eye of the public, was 10 Things I Hate About You. He was the super-sexy artsy punk who didn't give a shit, and, while it seems like a trite premise now, that movie was one of the ones who introduced the genre.

After that, he was the hunky-but-broke knight in A Knight's Tale. Now, his acting wasn't that great in this one, as his deliverance of "olde-tyme" repartee is kind of... Stilted... But it was still a very fun movie to watch.

Then he went on to a few more meh movies like Lords of Dogtown and The Brothers Grimm, but I think the main reason people give him so much credit and adulation is because, if you look at the characters and roles he'd done before, pretty much his entire film career, nothing ever, EVER came close to his insane performance as The Joker. That homicidal scariness, the truly primal fear that this is a person who absolutely does not give one ounce of shit about anything or anyone, including himself. It was a depth and a chilling truth that no one had come to expect from him, an intensity of character that was very much outside of most peoples' comfort zones.

I'm not going to try to say that The Dark Knight was the be-all end-all movie, but I believe that Heath Ledger deserves almost all of the praise people give him for his Joker, regardless of his death.

[AdminAssistant]

I just know too much about acting theory and dramatic criticism. Ledger's Joker is mentally unstable and acts randomly, which to me doesn't make him a fully developed character. Eckhart, however, was a man with a mission, focused, deliberate. Now *that* is scary.

[Greenday]

I just know too much about acting theory and dramatic criticism. Ledger's Joker is mentally unstable and acts randomly, which to me doesn't make him a fully developed character. Eckhart, however, was a man with a mission, focused, deliberate. Now *that* is scary.

I have to disagree with this one. Ledger's Joker was very deliberate with what he did. Everything was clearly planned out. The only difference was in how chaotic his plans were.

From what I'm told, Ledger, when he had a role, fully immensed himself in it. He'd be so focused on getting into his role that it would cause him problems with his health.

[AdminAssistant]

He'd be so focused on getting into his role that it would cause him problems with his health.

Ugh, yeah, he was Method. I'm sorry but if you can't "find" your character without causing yourself physical or mental harm, then you're a bad actor. As Sir Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man, "You should really try acting sometime. It's much easier than whatever you're doing."

Personally, I respect the actors who treat acting like a job, which it is. It's an artistic job, but it's a job. Learn your lines, get to rehearsal (or the set), be professional, and enact your role. Coming to set in character? Bullshit. Not dropping character between takes or scenes? Bullshit. Harming yourself through starvation or drug use in order to "find" your character? BULLSHIT! And the industry should be taking a stand against it, because there are a lot of young wannabe actors who see people like Christian Bale and Daniel Day Lewis and think "Wow, those guys are great actors, and if I do the crazy shit they do, then I'll be a great actor, too!" It's sad.

[the_std]

And the industry should be taking a stand against it, because there are a lot of young wannabe actors who see people like Christian Bale and Daniel Day Lewis and think "Wow, those guys are great actors, and if I do the crazy shit they do, then I'll be a great actor, too!" It's sad.

Crazy people will act crazy no matter what they're doing. And this argument is quite the strawman. Kids copying what people do on movies is the oldest line in the book. If it were true, all kids would smoke, or do drugs, or have promiscuous sex. And method acting got its start in 1940. So does that mean there's been a bunch of kids out there ruining themselves for fame and glory for seventy years now? Oh wait, kids, never mind, PEOPLE will do anything for fame and glory. Method acting is definitely not the worst of the bunch.

I don't care if Christian Bale and Daniel Day Lewis are batshit insane. Their performances incite emotional reactions in me, sometimes to extremes. Isn't that the point of all art? People do it in different ways, with different levels of results in different personality types. Personally, I appreciate the effort some method actors put into their work. They might not be nice, balanced people, but they make good movies.

[AdminAssistant]

The point of all art is so philosophical and personal that the answer will vary from person to person. For me, it's the reflection of a society back on to itself. There's no right or wrong to that, though.

However, I don't feel that artists should have to suffer for the sake of their art, physically or mentally. If great art comes out of suffering, then, okay. (Sarah Kane is a terribly sad, but good example of this. Very troubled woman, but brilliant playwright. Sadly, her best work was her suicide note. ) But I don't think someone should deliberately cause harm to themselves in order to be a better artist of any kind. It sets a bad precedent; one that I would like to see abolished. Great acting should come out of talent, hard work, and excellent training.

This is nitpicky, but technically the Method was developed in the 30's. It's Lee Strasberg's crazy interpretation of Stanislavski's early teachings, which were already mistranslated. He was...a bit of an egomaniac and a complete nut. Stella Adler, who trained Marlon Brando, actually went to Russia and trained with Stanislavski herself. Her acting technique is actually quite interesting, combining Stanislavski's text work with Laban-esque movement techniques.

[telecom_goddess]

I had to endure Jennifer Aniston in Derailed, mind you I have kinda developed a man crush on Clive Owen due to Sin City and Shootemup, so he saved that film for me.

If you like Clive Owen watch Closer....he's amazing in that and it's what made me like him and end up watching him in Derailed.

As for over rated where to start...Sylvester Stallone for one. Most of the new young crowd these days. I'll think of more.

[AdminAssistant]

Closer is a pretty good movie (the play is better, though). Clive Owen and Natalie Portman are fantastic in it. Hey, that reminds me of two other overrated actors - Jude Law and Julia Roberts. Ugh.

[Andara Bledin]

I've always thought Julia Roberts was freaky looking. Her mouth is way too wide.

^-.-^

[Ginger Tea]

Oh Jude Law AND Gwenith Paltrow in the same movie ...

I did Like Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow for the stylisation, it did seem written for the time, not a modern style of writing film set in the world of matinee movies, it just had to have the holyshit trinity of those two and Angelina Jolie.

It's one of the few movies with him in it I've ever watched*, although Paltrow in sliding doors was tollerable as the movie WAS good, not my top 100 but it wasn't shite by any means.

*I automatically thought he was a knob when I first heard of him when he held his daughters birthday party in a nightclub of all places and she took a tablet (of E?) she found in the carpet, possibly from the night befor?

[Plaidman]

Huh. I liked Heath Ledger, long before the Dark Knight. Loved him in ten things I hate about you, The Brothers Grimm, Knight's Tale, Brokeback Mountain. Even liked him in his smaller roles in Monster's Ball as Billy Bob's son who commits suicide in front of his father after asking him "Did you ever love me?" Billy bob says no, Heath goes "Well I always loved you" *BOOM*, and in Patriot as Mel Gibson's son.

I like the fact that he seems like a different character in most of his roles, (not all, but most).

As for proclaiming that Joker seemed random and wasn't a fully realized character? .....That IS how Joker is in the comics. That's what makes him dangerous. He may one day take over a game show and put the contestents in life or death contests, such as having a trivia round with impossibly difficult questions, only to spray them with water and not acid like they were expecting, having his famous razor sharp playing cards turn out to be duds, only to have his true agenda come out with a hidden camera in the production room that showcases the director laughing manically at the ideaof joker killing the audience and/or contestents, as they signed a waiver incase they come to harm so their not libel, and it's bringing their ratings up, or he may simply blow up a grade school because a single student there was the nephew of a rival that stole his Joker gas formual, or to gassing a kindgarten class just for kicks. Joker isn't predictiable or even a fully functional person, he's insane with a strange 'Super Sanity' in that his senses and mindset is reseted every few days.

But that's the major super duper comic nerd, and in particular the Batman series which I'm an rabid fan of.


As for overrated actors?

Tom Cruise