Bad acting performances are a dime-a-dozen and if you want proof, take a gander at TotalFilm's 50 Worst Acting Performances for a sampling. What's not as common, however, are abysmal, embarrassing, laughable and shockingly terrible performances turned in by truly great actors. Whether it be a good or bad film, how often do you witness an generally reliable, Oscar-caliber actor completely phone it in?
I'll grant you everything that Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino have made over the last 10 or 15 years might fall under this category, and if you want to qualify Nic Cage as a great actor (he does have an Oscar, after all), most of his recent performances may qualify as well, although I find that Cage's performances typically suit the role, good or bad. Other bad performances by great actors -- say, Jon Voight in Anaconda -- actually seemed designed to be bad. After all, you don't deliver an Oscar-worthy performance in a movie about a giant, man-eating snake, do you?
They may not all be Oscar or Emmy winning actors, but they have at least been mentioned in those conversations, and that makes these truly awful performances even harder to stomach.
Josh Brolin, Into the Blue
Eric Bana, Star Trek
John Wayne, Genghis Khan
Guy Pierce, Count of Monte Cristo
George Clooney, Batman and Robin
Morgan Freeman, Wanted
Clint Eastwood, The Eiger Sanction
Christian Bale, Terminator Salvation
Helen Mirren, National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Lucille Ball, Mame
Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Secret Window
Sean Connery, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Marlon Brando, The Island of Dr. Moreau
Jack Nicholson, The Bucket List
Laura Linney, Congo
Tommy Lee Jones, Batman Forever
Ben Kingsley in Species, Sound of Thunder, Thunderbirds, and Bloodrayne
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In what alternate universe is Josh Brolin a truly great actor?
Can I nominate Edward Norton for The Italian Job? The ending, as he’s being dragged away, has always stuck with me as such a cinematic stink pig.
Nevermind, I just remembered the rest of everything he’s done.
Norton was da bomb in “Smoochy” yo!
Can I nominate Kate Hudson for “Almost Famous” and Mark Wahlberg for “Boogie Nights?”
Oh, wait, I thought this was “Great Performances by Truly Dreadful Actors.”
I think there’s a difference between phoning it in (which usually implies a lackluster performance) and overacting, which can make a movie hilarious for all the wrong reasons. John Wayne in Genghis Khan does not belong in this article because that was the fault of the people who agreed with the casting agent – I think there were lots of hallucinogens involved in that decision making process.
Yeah, most of these aren’t actors phoning it in – these are examples of normally good actors being shitty. It’s one thing to try and fail, but phoning it in implies they didn’t even try. Don’t think that’s the case with a lot of these.
Eiger Sanction was alright and Clint was fine in it, some of the climbing sequences in that flic are great. Brando was a pretty broken person by the mid 90s, the people that hired him then were the ones who phoned it in. I thought Nicholson was okay in the bucket list, not sure what else should have been expected of him there. No one came out of Congo looking good, not every Crichton book needed to be made into a movie. You are right about Kingsley though, but really shouldn’t he get a pass because of Ghandi and Sexy Beast.
The one on this list that still riles me is Johnny Depp being dumb enough to take a role that Gene Wilder absolutely killed in, then crapping the bed..
I dug the list but would have dug it even more if there had been some insulting descriptions of the phoned in performances to go with the trailers on each page. Fun article though!
To piggyback on what others have said, I think this is more about “great actors accepting roles in really bad movies”.
Plus, Christian Bale in Terminator 4 led to the “ooooh good for you!” rant, so it can’t be THAT bad.
Johnny Depp wasn’t “bad” in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He was “badly miscast”. Now, John Wayne as Ghengis Khan? Oh yeah. Now THAT is just BAD.
Eric Bana in Star Trek was good.
Ya,like that guy up there said a year and a half ago.