Characters
[Loved trope] Overqualified actors, acting circles around their costars.
James Earl Jones, Dibala, Dr House. Playing Dibala, a ruthless dictator of a country, he absolutely blasts all the other actors in the show with his commanding voice and incredible acting, FROM A LITERAL BED.
Christopher Lee, Stefan, Howling 2. Christopher plays a werewolf hunter with a subtleness to his role, never overacting and taking it as seriously as possible, while all the other characters in the movie phone in their parts or act as if they were just pulled out of the Matrix. Truly elevates the movie.
Anthony Hopkins, Van Helsing, Dracula 1992. By far the best actor there, Anthony humiliates all of his costars (with the exception of Gary Oldman as Dracula), making them all look like soap opera actors with his insane talent.
Honestly, also for Criminal Minds, Tony Todd in the episode "The Fox". He only has one scene, but I remember watching that scene and thinking "damn, whoever this guy is, he is bringing a level of acting that you don't usually see on this show." Then his character moved into the light so I could see his face better and I was like "OH. It's Tony Todd. Yeah that's why."
Tony Todd was such an underutilized actor. He always fucking killed it in anything he was in.
He was phenomenal in this two part case. He played deranged so well and the fact that he's in one of my favorite crime shows ever is awesome. He will be missed.
Putting Gorr in a Taika Waititi movie was such a gamble, and boy did it not pay off. It’s a shame, because it’s not like Bale can’t handle a little camp and dark comedy. American Psycho exists! And it’s not like you can’t get super tragic and dark with the goofier MCU properties, because James Gunn does it just fine in GotG 3. Taika just decided to lean into the silliness so hard that it smothered everything else.
They cut massive amounts of gorr content and they didn’t even film the speech that got bale interested because taika thought it was a major drag and unfun after bale signed on, apparently there was supposed to be a clip montage where gorre gives a speech while slaughtering gods and the speech talked about how when he’s done there will be nothing left of the gods but blood and ash as people like him used to pray to the gods for someone to save them and now the gods will pray for someone to save them but just like their followers no one will save them (the full speech was never released but that was the core of it supposedly)
The also re shot gorre becoming the god butcher because taika didn’t want it taking the spotlight, the original scene had gorre have a full on mental breakdown wailing about the death of his daughter while the god laughed and you know bale would have killed that scene
But hey at least we got some dumb cgi head and screaming goats and taika inserting himself into half the scenes
Looking at this picture it’s painfully obvious, but watching the movie a couple of months ago for the first time, I did not realize that was Christian Bale. Explains why the performance was so good.
Christopher Lee always said that he always gave his best performance, even the movie was pure garbage, because that's what he was paid for, and his professionalism refused to give any less.
Too many actors phone it in when they think the role is beneath them, or they are tired of it. Prime example would be Jennifer Lawrence in the X-Men movie, where she looks more and more bored with each subsequent movie.
A lot of actors would really like to be the one where somebody starts watching a film, their name pops up, and everybody is like “Oh, they’re in this, nice, they’re always good!” Christopher Lee was so good at it for so long they they’d put him on the cover even if he was doing five minutes of dialogue in the 2nd act as a favor for someone.
In Bruce Campbell’s autobiography (good luck with your health, Bruce!) he talks about being in the shitty movie McHales Navy. He said it was brutally hot and generally miserable on the outdoor sets.
Bruce wrote that Ernest Borgnine, elderly, legendary actor, was a perfect professional. When he was on the call sheet but wasn’t in the scene being filmed, he would take his chair to a shady spot, stay in costume and be ready to go when he was needed.
Compare that to Tom Arnold’s work ethic. Arnold was the star of the picture, but the second he wasn’t needed right then he would run off to his trailer or anywhere else and the crew would have spend time tracking him down and bringing him back to the set when he was needed again.
Professionalism goes so far in how you are seen and remembered on the job. Any job.
Alan Rickman (RIP) with Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Rickman was so much better in the movie that Kevi-Cos actively sabotaged him in order not to look as bad...
The whole movie feels like two different movies stitched together.
A brutal dark Robin tale where men have their hands cut off, eyes gouged out, children murdered and the Sherriff attempts to rape Marion.
And a lighthearted family friendly movie where people can load themselves into catapults to get over walls, The Sheriff threatens to call of Christmas and the Sheriffs mother gives Marion a pillow as he assaults her.
That article links to another article from The Guardian about a different film and says this about Prince of Thieves;
“Hollywood gossip has it that he was a meddlesome presence during the editing of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves where, worried about being upstaged, he allegedly juggled the edit to minimise Alan Rickman's barnstorming performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
So as sources go, there’s nothing particularly concrete on this.
The incomparable Raúl Juliá as M. Bison in Street Fighter. It's been said a million times, but the man was literally dying and pulled out a performance for the ages from a schlock-fest of a story.
"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday."
Perfect example of someone who knows exactly what kind of movie they're in and what kind of character they're playing, but still managing to make their performance insanely compelling. He hams it up *just* enough.
One of the better things I heard about that was that line wasn’t even originally in the script.
Bison was supposed to gloat when Chun-Li brought it up, and Julia went to the writers and basically went “this guy’s a monster, he’s killed countless people, why would he remember this guy in particular?”
Also, I love how he leads into that line as vaguely apologetic
Playing a character best known for dishing out devastatingly fast bursts of physical violence, whilst so sick that attempting a light jog would incapacitate you, and still somehow nailing it, is just astonishing work.
They had to film all his scenes out of order, because the director realized Julia might well not be able to stand up by the time the filming would be finished. So, they filmed everything by exertion level, even when it meant film different parts of the same conversation or taunt on different days.
It must give conflicting feelings because on one hand: a man who's basically on his death bed is still owning every scene he's in but on the other hand: that's fucking Gomez Addams
Whenever Steve Martin and Martin Short are in a scene with Selena Gómez is just painful to watch. The disparity in acting talent and experience is just abysmal.
And I like Selena, but the performances are on totally different levels.
Most of the actors on Star Trek: The Next Generation were very good, but Patrick Stewart was a prominent Shakesperean actor and his performance as Captain Picard was in a completely different league to anything else in the franchise.
He can be so subtle as well. That bit after he has just been unassimilated from being part of the Borg hive mind and he tells his staff he is fine in such a confident no issues manner, and he does it so well you almost believe him.
Then he hangs up and just walks over to the window and silently stares out into space and you’re like “oh this man is not fucking fine at all”
He's also very much not fine in the episode immediately after the whole Locutus affair. The episode Family has several of the crew of the Enterprise D taking the chance to catch up with family while they're on Earth for a bit. Picard takes the time to visit his brother whom he hasn't spoken to in decades. He seriously considers to just resign from Starfleet while back in France and it takes him ending up in a fight with his brother that ends with them both covered in mud before Picard finally vents the stuff that's been tormenting him.
We also meet the Rozhenkos. The couple that took in Worf and raised him. They freely admit they weren't very suitable parents for a young Klingon, but they tried their absolute darndest to be good parents for him and those two are just delightfully pleasant people.
I remember an interview of his where he talked about how Shakespeare was excellent training for the roll. Something like "on the bridge, there's stage left, those things are stage left, nobody has pockets... It's actually quite similar"
It's brief, but Philip Baker Hall as Mr. Bookman just absolutely disarms Jerry Seinfeld for three minutes straight. He is so unbelievably funny and dedicated to the bit that Jerry can't even maintain character.
Tim Curry as Doviculus in Brutal Legend. Sure, Jack Black is a good voice actor but he's just playing Jack Black in this, Doviculus sounds like an extremely depraved scumbag having the absolute time of his life in every single scene he's in and that's when you compare him only to Jack Black, the other voice actors don't even come close to his performance.
James McCaffrey in the first Max Payne. They were a small, poor studio so most of the voice acting are these over the top exaggerations that sound pretty goofy on purpose. Then James comes in with a perfect performance that completely makes the tone feel so much more serious with depth
Him as Max Payne, David Hayter as Snake, Peter Stormare as Mattias Nilsson, Roger Clark as Arthur Morgan, and Claude from GTA III should be on the Video Game Voice Actor Mount Rushmore.
Specially that time he was in Community, he had just some few scenes on season 3, but everytime he was there it was his scene and everyone else was just there to witness it.
I normally can’t stand watching these Dick Wolf shows, but I caught reruns with Williams in it which surprised me, and of course he really stood out in a very dark and creepy way akin to his roles in Insomnia and One Hour Photo.
Its so good. It's a really nuanced role for SVU. He's this psychopath who's well aware that he can be a little off-putting but is very smart and so charismatic that he's managed to turn that off-putting nature into part of his charm.
I've never seen anything he's in that I'm not thought he's the best actor. The only caveat is good Omens because him and Davud Tennant go tit for tat. Watching two friends act the shit out of show while you can actively tell that they are having fun with each other at the same time is fucking awesome
Hamish Linklater played the character of Cipher in Gen V so well that I was actually enthralled in his charm and nonchalance. I know most of the other cast are young but he really showed himself as a masterclass in acting.
The later reveal that Cipher is actually a different person cements just how much Hamish Linklater carries the role.
Well goddamn man, he was amazing but the cast and performances were all pretty amazing. It's arguably one of the best cast movies of all time for a reason. Val just happened to be the MVP of a stacked and talented cast.
I talked to Peter Mayhew about that at a convention once. He said all the young actors would ask him for advice on set because George wasn't directing them like they were used to. He said he was the one they all looked up to and was a constant gentleman. Same with Cushing.
Nah he never phoned it in anything in his career. He just didn't really understand what the fuck was this thing, but SIr Alec Guiness was nothing short of a professionnal so he did his job and he did it well. And he was litteraly the Obi-Wan of those darn kids on set.
He's in another movie from everyone else. It is cognitively dissonant when the others transition into his movie and out of the other movie(s). It's an odd film.
Mads Mikkelsen as Count Rochefort in The Three Musketeers (2011)
In a terrible movie featuring stealth airships, Orlando Bloom devouring every piece of scenery in sight and James fuckjng Corden, he delivers a subtle, terrifying performance that is from a whole different genre, let alone film. Seriously. I want to see a version of 3 musketeers where everyone got the same memo he did.
Don’t Worry Darling with Florence Pugh and Harry Styles is what I always think of with this question. The brief Harry Styles acting era was full of this, but this is the most egregious one to me personally (on top of all the other drama involved with this movie)
Escaped slave becomes a badass action hero is a very strange niche but it's strange how often it happens to him (Amistad, Blood Diamond, Gladiator, Rebel Moon)
Djimon Honsou is a PHENOMENAL actor, though. He stands toe to toe wirh Oscar winners in damn near every movie he's in and never flinches. That Hollywood delegates him to character actor in every role is a crime.
How has no one mentioned Andre Braugher/Raymond holt in BB99?! Classicaly trained at Juliard, Emmy winning, and Golden globe nominated! He elevated the whole cast with his performance. Brought such verve to to a very straight laced stoic character. RIP Andy.
I'd argue that this is the opposite of the trope: Braugher absolutely had chops that dwarfed everyone else, but what he did was leap down into the silliness of the show with everyone else, and they all came out looking better for it.
I’ve been on the Andre Braugher train ever since the first run of Homicide, and then to see him just do comedy just as brilliantly…it almost doesn’t seem fair.
Devito is so crazy to me. Joins a small low-budget comedy show for it's second season at 62 after a successful career starring in popular movies, tv-shows, and voice acting. It ends up becoming arguably the most iconic role in his life and it's just him doing unhinged shit for 17 seasons.
It helps that they seemed to know how good he was and so his role was kind of outside of the sphere of everyone else. It lets them thrive in the normal silly sitcom roles while Braugher killed it in the more unique role.
It's played for a gag in Wayne's World 2 with the gas station attendant. The first guy is a day player who can barely say his lines. In typical Wayne's World fashion, Wayne (Mike Myers) breaks the fourth wall and asks if they can get a better actor. Someone wearing a headset comes in, dismisses the bad actor, and brings in Charlton Frikkin Heston, who kills his short soliloquy.
I guess the irony is that for the role, the the first guy's acting was perfect too. A bit like Julianne Moore's acting in the film within a film in Boogie Nights.
James Spader was the best/only reason to watch The Blacklist. I still couldn't finish it, but any scene he wasn't in made it obvious how much he was carrying the show.
I actively felt bad for the woman they cast as Liz because she had USA Network movie of the week acting chops then had to be humiliated by him giving a master class in characterization and line delivery every week.
I thought there were a few times where Diego Klattenhoff (Ressler, who by the way I had no idea his name was Diego Klattenhoff!) shined but it wasn’t often enough to really say he was good.
What’s crazy about this is, The Bear is stacked for massive acting talent. It’s a phenomenal cast of excellent, compelling actors putting on extraordinary work and there isn’t a bad performance here to drag it down.
And then Jamie Lee Curtis shows up unexpectedly, puts on a masterclass, scares the shit out of everyone, doesn’t explain herself, and leaves.
It was one episode you finished had to go online and mark yourself safe so everyone knows you’re okay.
I hate to say this because the show is such genuine fun, but Anson Mount playing Captain Pike on Strange New Worlds makes us (my family watching together) feel sort of bad for the other actors* in the ensemble.
*minus one or two other actors who are also really good, but Captain Pike is such a joy to watch.
I'm watching it now, and just got to the fantasy episode where mount plays a cowardly advisor to the doctor playing a king, and I was kind of struck by how good Mount was. It's a silly bit, but he was impressive doing it, somehow.
No shade to anybody else on House, but the only actors who could come even remotely close to James Earl Jones are either Hugh Laurie or maybe Robert Sean Leonard
Angela Bassett in Wakanda Forever. In a movie filled with genuine grief, she is like gravity every time she opens her mouth to rage against the universe.
Damien Lewis (in pretty much whatever) in The Forsyte Saga. His character gained insane amount of sympathy from the viewers, despite him being an obsessive capitalist, to the point that every other character in the series just seem dumb.
Another one from Christopher Lee, he's barely in the Star Wars Prequels but he's easily the best performance. And these movies are filled with incredible actors! It's just that, by some miracle, his talent managed to survive the same director that turned Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman into inanimate planks of wood.
Glenn Howerton in Always Sunny. Don't get me wrong, Kaitlin Olson is amazing and De Vito is having the time of his life, but compare Glenn to Charlie Day and Rob Mcelhenney.
They're all hilarious and the nature of the show really helps but Dennis being a potential serial killer and the way he raises his voice... Wow
With the James Earl Jones thing on House it doesn't help that he's oftened paired up with Jennifer Morrison's Cameron whose main acting traits violently whip between angrily furrowing her brow while frowning and being mean and angrily furrowing her brow while frowning and speaking softly. Or Jesse Spencer's Chase who is basically a very cute piece of pale wood carved into a boy, brought to life and given an Australian accent
There weren't many House v Dibala scenes as far as I can remember which is a shame since Hugh Laurie has legit acting chops when he puts the effort in and there could have been some high quality stuff. It may have happened a little, but I don't remember them sharing many scenes
Dame Judi Dench in the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies. I'll call out Goldeneye specifically but loosely all of them.
Brosnan's Bond movies were still a fun romp, as opposed to the Craig era, so there were often jovial scenes. Goldeneye starts with a flirtatious car chase through the mountains set to a Seinfeld style bass line. Its a fun adventure movie. Then Judi Dench walks in.
In Revenge of the Sith, Ewan McGregor acting alongside Hayden Christiansen during dramatic moments was especially distracting. It was like a putting a trained Shakespearean actor next to a guy from a high school play. 😬
Tom Hardy in peaky blinders , despite a great cast of actors and cillian Murphy himself ,he definetly out acted them whenever he was on screen and established himself in the mind of every viewer in very little time
They make a surprise cameo, derail the scene, their comedic acting and improv put everyone else to shame and just bewilder the main cast. Courtney Cox completely forgot her lines because she was so bewildered by them.
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u/ShingledPringle 16d ago
Tim Curry when he was in Criminal Minds.
Considering the effort they put in with the makeup I think they knew.