Worst “Serious” Actor of all time

A Rickman roles

George Clooney. If he wasn't from a famous family, he'd have vanished from the scene by 1993.

Vincent Price , Hot man , but the same ad nauseum.

Look at some old George Arliss movies. Aside from giving us Bette Davis, he should be laughed at.

R2 I used to think Cooney was overrated until I saw Solaris. He was very good in that.

Fuck you, OP, Alan Rickman is everything an actor should be!

No, it's Richard Burton and Nicholas Cage who embody everything The Worst "Serious" Actor Of All Time should be. A few years of terrific early work, followed by mushrooming egos, professional carelessness, and foolishiness in the private life, which in turn led to fucking decades of doing anything they could get for a paycheck. No, Burton spent the majority of his career trading on his early reputation as a Great Thespian, and Nicholas Cage is going to do the same thing as long as anyone will pay him money.

Charlton Heston, a reliable announcer of lines, but not much of an actor.

Jack Nicholson.

Ben Affleck

Jimmy Smits

Leonardo. He's a petulant brat who can't pull off believable adult angst..

R10 = Mark-Paul Gosselaar

r12 Hmmm?

Another vote for Leonardo DiCaprio. I've hated everything he was in except What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I can't watch him without thinking he is "acting" and I think he is a horrible actor.

I have to agree about Alan Rickman - very much a one-note, hammy actor. He got a bit better with age, but not much.

His early 1990s performance in 'Truly, Madly, Deeply' was particularly atrocious - smug, snivelling and petulant. Just horrible.

Laurence Harvey

I have to also agree with other posters about Leonardo di Caprio - he always looks like a teenage kid playing at being an adult. And his emotional range is so limited and always the same - e v e r y fucking time.

His performance in 'The Aviator' was particularly horrible - and just as unconvincing. Colin Farrell looked much more like Howard Hughes and would have portrayed him far more convincingly.

di Caprio seems an amiable enough guy, but is just a bad, bad actor.

hated everything with Daniel Day Lewis - a total ham, overly acts in everything

[quote] I have to also agree with other posters about Leonardo di Caprio - he always looks like a teenage kid playing at being an adult. And his emotional range is so limited and always the same - e v e r y fucking time.

By most accounts, he still doesn't know how to act like an adult in real life. Why would he know how to do it for a movie?

I agree about dicaprio, he always looks like he's in his early teens and waiting for his balls to drop.

His gut dropped before his balls.

I second Jack Nicholson. Same old self-enamored crap in every movie.

[quote]a total ham

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Michael Caine and Sean Connery

I have wondered since Goldfinger or Thunderball, whichever came first, what people saw in Sean Connery.

Years later, r25, I would come to appreciate the fact that his mother was able to spell his name correctly.

His mother knew him as Tommy.

R25 It would have been fine if Connery didn’t think so highly of himself as an actor and if the academy hadn’t chosen to nominate let alone award him an oscar for the Untouchables which was blasphemous. As for Michael Caine, while likeable he is pretty much himself in every role now but his accent and the fact that he is british make people overlook that. British always get a pass and Hollywood loves to award them.

Well, r27, SOMEONE wrote his middle name on his birth certificate.

Caitlyn Jenner

Jack Nicholson - I have to agree.

Gotta agree about DiCaprio for the modern actor, of all the no-talent leading men of the last 10-20 years, he has the biggest disconnect between the amount of ability he has, and how seriously he's taken.

I suppose he's competent rather than laughable, but he never ever connects with the audience or brings whatever it takes to make a performance meaningful and gripping. And he gets all the best roles and the biggest awards, and he's only getting less interesting with age.

Warren Beatty, if ever considered 'serious', never convinced me. 'Warren Beatty' always.

He might well fit OP's designation of 'nerdfrau catnip' though. Great (memorable) description.

It's hard for me to trash Rickman because he's genuinely a pretty respectable guy. Had his head on his shoulders and wasn't one of these phony, pretentious media whores like Leonardo DiCaprio who tries to portray himself as serious. *shudder*

Also, why haven't Jayden Smith and Kristin Stewart been mentioned?

I came to mention Leo. Glad to see many others have already done so. He is so damn overrated as an actor, and his unbelievably desperate need to win an oscar made me cringe. Tom Hardy acted him off the screen in "The Revenant"

Don't lynch me, but I always thought that Johnny Depp wasn't that great an actor. I refere to when he was younger and choosing more daring projects. Yes, his choices were interesting but he didn't act that well. A lack of nuance, lot of making faces.

Jack Nicholson, yeah. Not bad, but way overrated.

While I don't agree with your Leo-bashing dear thread participants, I must admit that R17 has a point: Colin Farrell would have been a brilliant Howard Hughes. Hands down.

The movie would still have been more or less interesting, though.

DDL!

John Wayne.

Tom Cruise. Can only play "intense."

Clark Gable. Always the same in every movie.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers. "Acts" by shouting.

Richard Harris. As SCTV memorably pointed out, had two voices he would always alternate: whispery and dark, or shouting and high pitched.

Richard Burton..thread closed

Glenn Ford is so wooden you want to spray him with Pledge.

I watched some clips of Wolf of Wall Street, oh gosh—Leonardo.

I think Kim Novak was a beautiful mannequin who moved her mouth and spoke. She was unintentionally hilarious in Jeannie Eagle (I think that was the name) whose life story she starred in.

Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Kevin Spacey's accent on House of Cards was so distracting I couldn't make it past the first five minutes. And as a fan of the BBC original, I had been looking forward to the American remake. He was good in American Beauty but god, that accent was just terrible.

Miss Tammy Cruise.

Laurence Olivier

Sean Penn

His best role was Spicoli

Woody Harrelson

delta Burke!!!

Johnny Depp