The most utterly annoying film actors of all time

I’m always surprised when people attack the likes of Steven Seagal and Claude Van Damme for their lack of acting talent – no one ever claimed they had any. Might as well complain that a Big Mac doesn’t qualify ashaute cuisine – it was never meant to. 

It’s the actors who are occasionally or constantly called upon to play lead roles in fairly serious dramatic movies but who have no discernible talent, or have buried it under layers of irritating, self-conscious mannerisms, whose continued employment mystifies me.

Here’s a list of some of the most glaring examples:

Elizabeth Taylor- cursed with a thin, unpleasant, nasal voice and absolutely bereft of acting talent. Shockingly bad in every role she ever played: cannot deliver a line of dialogue convincingly to save her life.

Paul Newman – I just never got him, especially that fabulously irritating  scrunched-up pouty smirk (Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke went on to perfect their own variants). His other “look” is the one where he pouts like a male model in a perfume advert – I think he’s trying to look moody.

Nicholas Cage – looks like a scrawny geek who went on a bodybuilding course to stop having sand kicked in his face: reached his nadir early on in the inconsequential Peggy Sue Got Married, which should have marked the end of his career. Worst ever performance was Snake Eyes, which delivered hide-behind-the-sofa levels of embarrassment.

Rock Hudson – God save us! Made Arnold Schwarzenegger look like Robert Deniro.

Van Johnson – Bad beyond belief: who seriously thought this plabby-faced wimp would make a leading man? 

James Dean – ridiculous angst-ridden girlie-boy. Rebel Without A Cause is one of the silliest films ever made – what exactly is the little creep whining about?  

Angelina Jolie – huge lips, can’t act. Supremely lifeless and unconvincing inThe Changeling, the Clint Eastwood-directed movie for which, for some unaccountable reason, she received enormous praise. 

Joe Pesci – don’t be silly! About as dangerous and edgy as a bluebottle in tough guy roles and an extraordinarily irritating presence in comedies. Almost singlehandedly destroyed the Lethal Weapon series, and, for me, made Goodfellas unwatchable.

Sean Penn – I cannot physically watch a film in which he appears. I sat down  with Milk, in which he played the gay San Francisco mayor of that name, determined to watch to the end. I lasted five minutes. He’s an angster, not an actor.

Sandra Bullock – she can be excellent (The Net, Crash) but when misdirected can hand in depth-plumbingly bad performances: I cannot forgive her for Speed 2.

Julia Roberts – Looks weird, can’t act.

Jude Law – the looks of an average male model, but with less acting talent. 

Daniel Day Lewis – The silly sausage can be very good - I admired him inThere Will Be Blood, but I just can’t forget him in Gangs of New York, in which he delivers a master-class in misconceived  hammery (mind you, the whole movie was an utter gobbler).

Richard Gere – if you stuffed a full-grown elephant up his bottom he would blow noisily through his nostrils and look sideways down at the ground: it’s his only technique for displaying emotion. 

Warren Beatty - nope, I don’t get it. Another vacuous pretty-boy who just demands to be slapped. At least Paul Newman appeared in the occasional decent movie (The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke) but Beatty’s oeuvre is uniformly dire.

Mickey Rourke – despite The Wrestler, we have a fish/barrel/gun scenario here.

Elliott Gould – If there’s a smugger performance than his doctor in Mash, I haven’t seen it. When is the world going to drop the pretense that he has the first clue about acting?

There are dozens more, of course, but that’s enough negativity for one posting.

I will, however, end by handing out the Golden Gronnie for the Worst Actor in the History of Motion Pictures to Michael J. Pollard. Now, I feel a bit mean, because he was hardly a leading man, but he enjoyed decades of semi-regular employment pretending to be an actor, and never seemed to learn anything. He played C.W. Moss in Bonnie & Clyde, the unwarranted critical success of which leant this cypher’s affectless mumblings a spurious air of counter-cultural authenticity. A reel of his various anti-performances should be shown to all aspiring actors accompanied by the warning:“Whatever you do, don’t do this.”