Beloved Stars (Dead or Alive) You Can't Stand

Speaking of smarmy assholes, this lipless clown with a closet full of skeletons.

Dolly Parton

here

By most accounts of those who knew him Gene Kelly was a self-enamored jerk.

Gene Kelly was gorgeous--despite the cheesy clenched smile ("Like me! Like me!"), I always could forgive him a lot because of his handsomeness and great ass.

He wasn't much of an actor, though. He should have played the heel more often---he must have been perfectly cast as the title role in "Pal Joey."

Spencer Tracy; Irene Dunne; Tom Hanks; Adam Sandler; Julia Roberts; Zac Efron...

Bea Arthur. She played the same one-note character in everything she did on stage and screen. Loud, abrasive and always the same double-take. (I am one of the few DL'ers not into Golden Girls.)

Gene Kelly was gorgeous and talented. He doesn't play an "obnoxious jerk" in either Singin In The Rain or An American In Paris. Do you find his sexiness threatening or something?

I can't stand Tom Hanks, I have no reasons. Can't stand Sean Penn. He overacted and got great reviews, it seems to have encouraged a lot of actors since then to overact in the same way. But the exception is, I love him in Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

I never really could stand Robert DeNiro. I can just about take him now that he's elderly, and only in comedies.

Joan Crawford - I can stand her in her Warner Bros movies, her MGM ones when she tries so hard to enunciate and talk like a lay-dee...ugh.

John Wayne. Bob Hope. Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana.

Beloved in the gay community - JOAN RIVERS. She was a Republicunt and a Trump lover. I don’t care what she did for our community. Her support of the right voids out any good she may have done.

Sterling Holloway

Betty White

Oprah

Robin Williams. He was exhaustingly unfunny and his turn in Good Will Hunting was maudlin.

Gene Kelly was a closet case who was abusive and a total asshole.

Oh, yeah -And he couldn't sing for shit.

Wow OP, I LOVE Gene. He had such a kind face. And that ass.....

George Sanders. Always blathering on and on and on in every movie he was in.

Brenda Dickson. I know she is revered for her great beauty and acting talent, but there is something *off* about her that I can't put my finger on.

Donning my bullet-proof vest...

As a human being, I LOVED Elizabeth Taylor, but I never saw her give a decent acting performance as an adult. In every film she is predictable and artificial.

I feel like a heel for saying that, but it's true.

John Wayne (although I guess he's not so beloved now). Never could stand him.

Gary Cooper.

James Stewart.

Robert Taylor.

R20, coincidentally I'm watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and you are absolutely right. She was gorgeous in her prime, and such a generous humanitarian...however, she wasn't much of an actress.

Is it possible that dead people who are not relatives, could share their Past life with us through our dreams, if we ask?

Audrey Hepburn. Too mannered and twee.

Kirk Douglas.

Julia Roberts, never got her appeal. She's not beautiful, her acting is very one note, she usually plays variations on the same character and her cackling laugh gives me vertigo.

Definitely Elizabeth Taylor. I thought she was great in Virginia Woolf, but she's pretty awful in everything else I've seen her in. You can't say she didn't have star power though. As bad as she is in some stuff, you can't help but keep watching her.

Katharine Hepburn owns this thread.

I don't get the Tom Hanks hate.

Gene Kelly always struck me as a gay man trying too hard to appear straight as an arrow.

Taylor was great in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" but she needed a powerful director like Mike Nichols to get the performance from her.

He was a jerk in an American in Paris. The way he sat and stared at Leslie Caron (which felt like ages) while she was visibly uncomfortable was cringe-worthy.

R7 and R11 agree!

I used to like Joan Rivers....UNTIL... she was on a talk show and someone said something she didn't like and got all pissy about it. I think it had to do with her husband Edgar shortly after he died. However, she never had a problem going for the jugular with other people.

She could dish it out but couldn't take it. In general, I despise people like that.

I don't get the appeal for Sarah Paulson.

R28 How does she owns the thread? You are the first and the only one that mentioned her

Robin Williams was also a notorious joke thief, R15.

Well r35, he didn't steal much of value then.

I like some more than others of course and don't hate anyone, but Henry Fonda has never done anything for me. The thick accent and style of being so aw shucks most of the time (I do like Mister Roberts, however) grates on me. Even his classics are saved (for me) by the other stars in the film.

R35 here. I have to agree, R36.

OP and R1, I agree with you.

GRETA GARBO... total snooze on film ... although i love her photographs...i've tried, and i've tried to "get into her" on film and her movies, but i just can't...

jayne mansfield: annoying as hell... to say she was the "poor man's monroe" is a insult to monroe.. mansfield with all that coarse trying too hard, all those loud annoying squeals and cooing.. .. UTTER RIDICULOUS even for her era... what the hell was she going to do if she had lived to 40? 50? 60? lastly quite frankly she simply wasn't as attractive or even beautiful compared to Marilyn with her fleshy face, pug nose and plain brown eyes...

I could never warm up to Sammy Davis, Jr. I did like his singing voice - he had some pipes but his physical form... nope. I never liked his slick pompadour hair, his tiny, skinny body, his rat-like face and the bad eye. I remember seeing him on various shows growing up and feeling repulsion. I know some of his history - the Rat Pack, facing discrimination, civil rights activism, but his physical aspects turned me off.

Yeah op, Gene Kelly was such a show off in the dream sequences

Taylor Swift

[quote]Katharine Hepburn owns this thread.

This is a thread based entirely on personal opinion. No actor or actress is going to appeal to everyone. People can just have what amounts to a negative chemical reaction to certain stars. Personally, I could never stand Jack Nicholson, but I'm aware that he's a favorite of many people. Therefore, nobody "owns" this thread. It's a ridiculous thing to say.

Johnny Depp before his downfall.

R40, I agree with you on Garbo but I find Marilyn to be repugnant also. That jerky mouth movement thing she does and the baby girl voice is off putting as well as her the perpetual victim act. She was the poor man's Mae West but without the brains or talent.

R46 I thought I was the only one who finds Monroes' mannerisms "repugnant". Watching her child-woman routine gives me a skin crawling feeling. Something about it feels unnatural and off putting. I'll admit that these feelings are in the minority given her iconic status.

The Marilyn Monroe thing has been carried over into porn starlets and I find it creepy, too. Is that what men want? This infantile, soft spoken brain dead women?

Hearing about cold Henry Fonda was in real life from his daughter makes me look at his performances very differently. In fact, I think it makes him a better actor if he was able to give everyone this idea that he was this "aw shucks" type of guy.

I thought John Ritter was a comic genius, but something about his femmy voice never allowed me to buy him as some big womanizer. Screwed up my gaydar so much. Even in real life, I can't believe he was married with several kids and was straight as an arrow.

Tara Banks

R44 some tight asses just like to be censorious.

What DO you get out of trying to control others?

I read that Jackie Kennedy said that MM was as "common as dirt".

R52, that's rich coming from Jackie, who never had to work her ass off for anything in her entire life! sounds like a female trump!...then again, i've read that jackie stated that marilyn will go on eternally.. (i'm sure many many years after marilyn's passing)....

NO ONE can take away how far marilyn (norma jeane) came from to get to where she got!..... i understand some annoyed with her baby talk persona, however, for the most part that was her break out roles in 1953 (how to marry a millionaire, gentlemen prefer blondes, etc.) where she laid that on really thick, as her career rolled by from bus stop, to the prince and the show girl, to some like it hot, to let's make love, to the misfits and to the unfinished something's got to give, she was using a much more natural voice and mannerisms and would have progressed more so as she matured..

and of course SHE DID HAVE charisma and magnetism and the camera loved her if all she did was stand still.... the costume tests for something's got to give are breathtaking and none of her imitators could hope to match...

Jackie Ho was nothing more than a courtesan.

Sinatra. Fucking hate his voice.

I don't get all the hoopla for Frances McDormand. She can't play anything other than a raging cunt which she basically is in real life. Her 3 Billboards role was really not a stretch for her.

Can't include Marilyn in this - I see some things in her that no one else had. Not all good, but absolutely captivating. And I think I'd have liked her as a person, so long as I didn't have to work with her in any way.

I knew a studio makeup woman who did her body makeup and sometimes touched up her face against orders when the man in charge wasn't around or MM wanted it done. No credit, of course. She loved Marilyn, who she said was always kind, thoughtful, funny and honest. Marilyn gave her an engraved watch once. The family still has it.

I can't stand Julia Roberts, Tammy Cruise, Clooney, Leo, McDormand, or Lassie.

So many names on here I agree with.

Katherine Hepburn was great in her 30s movies but then after that she was so fake. And, in real life, she was a big cunt. The "Spensuh was my Great Love!" crap was the biggest (albeit very successful) job of bearding in Hollywood history.

Elizabeth Taylor was a terrific movie star, a great friend of the gays and a terrible actress.

Robin Williams was exhausting and ultimately, not very funny. Whoopi Goldberg has NEVER been funny....not once. Ever. Fight me.

Like many, I enjoyed Joan Rivers' bitchery but it's probably good she died before Trump became president because she might very well have fawned all over him.

Taylor Swift is....I don't know what she it. Certainly not talented. She's not even interesting.

The Kardashians and all their ilk...anyone who comes from "reality" TV world. Real Housewives. All of them. I blame all of them for this shit; for many ills of society....obsessions with fame and celebrity. So gross.

Not really a Lily Tomlin fan...she's funny, or can be, but....

She was the Queen of the Glass Closet for decades and now acts like she's always been "out" when in reality, she never really did come out. When it became safe enough to be out without huge repercussions and old enough to escape it really hurting her chances at mainstream success, she started talking openly about being with Jane Wagner. The hypocrisy of it is annoying. Ellen is a bit of a monster but Ellen really did walk the walk of dealing with the drama of REALLY coming out and Lily just glided along in her wake.

Oh...Oprah. She is a monster.

Whoopi was always better in dramatic roles. But in the 80s/90s there were more opportunities for non-glam black women in comedy, so.....

Robert Wagner.

Frank SInatra - egomaniacal asshole

Johnny Carson - egomaniacal asshole

Burt Reynolds - egomaniacal asshole

Katharine Hepburn - egomaniacal asshole

Barbra Streisand - egomaniacal asshole

Dick Clark - egomaniacal asshole

Jerry Lewis - egomaniacal asshole

DiCaprio playing himself in Titanic, Catch Me If You Can, Revolutionary Road, The Wolf of Wall Street, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, etc

R63 Definitely DiCaprio, and Jimmy Stewart.

All the nerd actors who get the glamorous girl. Dumpy straight guys through the ages love the type so they can fantasize it's them. I can't stand them. Some classic nerds: Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart, Glenn Ford, Elliott Gould...

Forgot Richard Dreyfuss

Elliott Gould a "nerd"?

G'wan now!

[quote] The Marilyn Monroe thing has been carried over into porn starlets and I find it creepy, too. Is that what men want? This infantile, soft spoken brain dead women?

Marilyn is the biggest sex symbol of the 20th century so I'm going to have to go with "yes". I like Marilyn much, much more in Niagra without that infantile voice thing.

[quote]Sinatra. Fucking hate his voice.

I think he has a decent voice, but most people said he really came into as a performer in the 60's. Maybe because there are so many bad lounge singers that imitate his style, but I don't see him as some great song interpreter post-1960 and often jazzing it up in places that really mess with the flow or take away from the song. I might be in the minority where I prefer his older stuff.

Steve Carrel and the Office in general. He was supposed to be a beloved loser, but he just bugged me.

R67, Elliott Gould and movie love interest. Sure, Jan.

I can't stand Sinatra either--his voice is bland to me. Nat King Cole sounds way better to me.

Humphrey Bogart--the most uncharismatic male star of Hollywood's Golden Age. I can't watch any movie he's in, they all drag once he opens his mouth and puts on that "tough guy" act.

R69, this isn't a Sinatra's voice thread. Many of us hate Sinatra as a person and for his voice (which is a matter of taste.) He was a punk, a short, ugly, swaggering asshole. That's been well documented and I can't stand him.

Jimmy Stewart. Outside of Hitchcock, I cannot watch films with him in them. His Hitchcock films are not my favorite, but Rope is bearable.

R72 - my niece (age 26) thinks Bogart and most of the classic film men are gross, because they're so much older than their female on-screen partners.

Tom Cruise,Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino. Any of their movies now I avoid like the plague. Overrated and boring. Feel everyone should bow to them.

Esther Williams

r75, I actually agree with her. But Bogart looks AT LEAST 30 years older than his female costars. Gross.

Cary Grant, Charleton Heston, Omar Sharif

Melissa McCarthy

Tom Hanks plays the same person in every film and I get so sick of these “normal white guy becomes a hero because of survival or bravery or ingenuity” roles. I get really suspicious when actors go for too many of those roles because it starts feeling like a personality issue underlying these choices or an obsessive need to be seen positively by the public. Same for Tom Cruise, for the most part.

R72, Bogart was one of those "cool guys" that fill nerdy straight guy's fantasies. Notice they're not fantasizing about the woman....

R82, true. Was Humphrey Bogart actually considered "hot" in his "prime" (I assume he always looked 50)?

another thumbs down on sinatra.. his voice always sounded like he was talking.... coarse, gravely, harsh.....

i'll take nat king cole who had a BEAUTIFUL AND MOVING voice over sinatra anyday and twice on sunday....

meryl streep... all i see is meryl now in any of her roles...

Nat King Cole gets extra points for giving us Natalie Cole.

[quote][R72] - my niece (age 26) thinks Bogart and most of the classic film men are gross, because they're so much older than their female on-screen partners

R75 Glad I can counter this with with someone I know. A woman I work with (we have returned to work), who's 22, loves Humphrey Bogart. She says he's a grown man, not the boyish type actors more popular now, like DiCaprio, Gosling, etc. She also loves Gene Kelly - LOVES. From watching Kelly movies, she got into Sinatra, then she got into Jimmy Stewart, who she also adores. I also like all these people. We have fun talking about all these actors and their movies.

R75, this does at least feel like positive social change. That long Hollywood tradition of old men with young girls still persists--maybe people like your niece will make it less popular.

I'm surprised people think Elizabeth Taylor was so bad. She wasn't brilliant, I guess, but I think she was just about perfect in Giant, Ivanhoe, Suddenly, Last Summer, etc. A Place In The Sun too - she was 17, but still kind of amazing, and of course, National Velvet.

"That long Hollywood tradition of old men with young girls..."

You should have said with young women. The phrase "with young girls" gives me pedophile creeps.

I don't really know if she's "beloved", but I keep seeing that Candyland commercial with Kristin Chenoweth and I just can't imagine her with that little pipsqueak voice in a movie. OTOH I see she won a Tony and my friend said she was good in some movie as a Playboy bunny - I guess I could see her playing that.

Clark Gable

Lucille Ball. Was a mean cranky bitch.

All these old time stars people are mentioning I think are great. I'm surprised nobody mentioned Cagney. I think he's the greatest of all. He plays to the back row of the second balcony but he beautifully contains it in a movie screen.

And I love Taylor in Cat. 'Maggie the cat is alive!' People complain that the movie is bowdlerized but when she says that you know she's competing with a man for her husband's love.

Michael Jackson

ive heard he was gay as a tulip.

I never liked Tom Cruise, even before I knew he was a Scientologist. He seemed like a big phony and his looks did nothing for me. Same with Mel Gibson, even before all the deplorable behavior came out, I didn't like him at all.

R90, "Candyland"? The board game? WTF?

Bob Hope and Woody Allen

Jack Nicholson. Though I like The Shining because that is who Jack is.

Jon Voight

gene kelly that is....

Dead: Jean Arthur (I cannot stand her voice); June Allyson; Mickey Rooney; Shirley Temple (ironic, since I was obsessed with her as a child).

Alive: Way too many to name; most alive celebrities bug the living shit out of me; there are a few that I can tolerate.

Gene Kelly...soooo annoying, smug, closet-case Homo.

Around the MGM lot, Kelly was known as "Smelly Kelly". This was not because he physically smelled bad but because, as a human being, he stunk!!!

Sure he had his admirers. including Vincente Minnelli, who prominently featured Kelly's ass in more on-screen shots than Minnelli's wife got in "The Pirate". Kelly allowed Minnelli to "worship" his ass - up close and personal - in his dressing room.

Kelly had little use for anyone who couldn't provide him with something (i.e. Stanley Donen, his former lover). One top-ten box-office actress who was directed by Kelly in a film, was offered the chance to do another Kelly directed musical extravaganza. Her response, "Being directed by Gene Kelly once in your lifetime is more than enough...."

I was a dancer in "Xanadu" and can only say that my brief encounters with Gene Kelly were more than enough. He treated everyone with indifference, as though they were insignificant to the film and I personally witnessed him being very condescending to Olivia Newton-John making references to her dancing skills. "Betty Garret is no longer one of the most unskilled dancers I've been in a film with. Olivia takes the crown..." he joked.

Betty White

MTM said Betty was more like Sue Ann Niven than people realized.

Also, Oprah.

[quote] r59 She was the Queen of the Glass Closet for decades and now acts like she's always been "out" when in reality, she never really did come out.

Lily Tomlin says no one ever asked until late in the game. She was living with her partner Jane for decades, going about her life. The situation wasn’t closeted so much as it was just ignored.

At the 4:15 mark in this 1975 bit she admitted to playing a heterosexual on screen. (“I’ve seen these women all my life, so I know how they walk, I know how they talk...People just don’t realize you don’t have to be one to play one.”)

Tomlin was going to come out as part of the marketing for the film of The Celluloid Closet (which she narrated).

Then at the last minute she backed out.

And Armistead Maupin got yet another 15 minutes, going around doing interviews about how Tomlin backed out of coming out.

Tom Hanks.