10 utterly hopeless actors who gave a great performance out of nowhere
There’s nothing that says that a bad actor can’t give a great performance.
If the quality of an actor’s abilities were the only thing that determined their success, Daniel Day-Lewis and Isabelle Huppert would be the biggest movie stars in the world, while Vin Diesel and Maude Apatow would never be heard from again.
Unfortunately, the essence of creating a movie star is much more complicated than a simple assessment of quality, and studios rarely look beyond their bottom line. That actors who don’t take their craft seriously or aren’t respected manage to have successful careers might be depressing for those who are still working to get their big shot, but it’s just the way that the business works.
When assessing someone’s abilities as a performer, there is a difference between being ‘bad’ and being ‘hopeless’. While someone like Ryan Reynolds has consistently made uninteresting choices that feel derivative, he has pulled out a number of strong performances in films like Mississippi Grind, Buried, Adventureland, and Definitely, Maybe.
Likewise, there are actors who have a very specific type of performance that they give in nearly every film that works for that genre; no one would claim that Steven Seagal is a good actor, but he’s effective when used as a blunt action star in Under Siege, Out for Justice, or Hard to Kill. There are also terrible actors who managed to give bad performances in good movies, such as Alex Pettyfer in Magic Mike, Elvis & Nixon, and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
However, it’s more exciting when someone known for sinking films is able to turn around a great performance.
10 actors who pulled a masterpiece out of nowhere:
Jennifer Lopez – ‘Out of Sight’ (Steven Soderbergh, 1998)
Jennifer Lopez is one of the worst examples of a celebrity who is vain enough to take themselves seriously as an actor; Lopez has very limited range and has mounted a massive ego, but is popular enough as a tabloid subject and musician to have a consistent acting career.
However, she has also been given a lot of chances because of how great she was with George Clooney in Out of Sight, the Steven Soderbergh film based on the Elmore Leonard novel, wherein she is incredibly believable pursuing the thief played by Clooney, and it’s fun to watch the two of them constantly outsmart and deceive each other over the course of a series of heists, all while falling madly in love. She might even have another great performance in her if she is willing to work with Soderbergh again.
Jean-Claude Van Damme – ‘Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning’ (John Hyams, 2012)
Action movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s were often led by elevated stunt artists who were appealing because of their physical skills, even if they couldn’t act to save their lives. Jean-Claude Van Damme has appeared in a number of fun action films like Hard Target, Lionheart, Bloodsport, and Timecop, but none of them featured a ‘good performance’. The original Universal Soldier was a goofy ‘90s blockbuster directed by Roland Emmerich, but the legacy sequels from John Hyams transformed the series into psychological thrillers about toxic men creating a brainwashing conspiracy to start a fascist cult.
Van Damme turns in an effectively terrifying performance as a corrupted version of Luc Deveraux in Hyams’ avant-garde masterpiece Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which felt closer to a Michael Haneke or Brian De Palma film than anything Emmerich-related, in a role that was clearly inspired by Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
Chuck Norris – ‘Code of Silence’ (Andrew Davis, 1985)
Chuck Norris became an internet meme because of the abundance of ‘facts’ about his incredible strength and bravura, but the majority of his film roles were in cheap B-movies that made the work of Sylvester Stallone look like fine art. Code of Silence is a cop thriller that was originally written to be a sequel in the Dirty Harry franchise, but it was reconfigured and given to director Andrew Davis, who would go on to make Under Siege and The Fugitive.
Norris plays a character who, not unlike Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, is the one good cop on a police force that is overrun by corruption. It’s a surprisingly grounded role in which he is believable as a lone hero trying to take down a system that has fallen apart. It’s more than just an action film, and earned Norris a rave review from Roger Ebert.
Blake Lively – ‘A Simple Favor’ (Paul Feig, 2018)
Blake Lively has attracted constant media attention recently for the ongoing legal litigation involved in It Ends With Us, and director Justin Baldoni, but the controversy has masked the fact that she’s never been a particularly good actor, and has succeeded in running a successful public relations campaign more powerful than any of the films that she’s appeared in.
A Simple Favor seemed like an odd film for a comedy director like Paul Feig to make, but it succeeded as a self-aware riff on trashy thrillers, filled with ridiculous plot twists and satire of the crusty upper class. Lively gives a whirlwind of a performance that was unpredictable and ultimately impossible to replicate; the film’s sequel, Another Simple Favor was unable to capture the brilliance of its predecessor and featured a performance from Lively that was much less successful.
Stephen Dorff – ‘Somewhere’ (Sofia Coppola, 2010)
Stephen Dorff has been statistically proven to be the worst-reviewed actor in cinematic history, which might be what made him perfect to star in the experimental Sofia Coppola drama Somewhere, in which he stars as a famous movie star deeply unhappy and unfulfilled with his life, and tries to reconnect with his young daughter, played by Elle Fanning, in one of her first major roles.
Dorff’s performance is often silent, and the film does a great job at contrasting his persona as a charismatic action star with how downbeat he is in real life when the cameras aren’t watching. While Coppola’s creative direction is a major reason why the film is so successful, Dorff succeeds at making it feel lived-in, and his performance works because of the baggage that he brought to the role, with his scenes involving Fanning, in particular, being quite moving.
Ezra Miller – ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)
Ezra Miller has faced so many controversies that it’s hard to imagine they will ever have a career resurgence, with the box office disasters of The Flash and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore seemingly offering confirmation. Miller has always been too high-wired and obnoxious to feel like a grounded character, but Lynne Ramsay expertly used that complex persona to tell a deeply disturbing story in We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Miller is effective in the film as a psychopathic teenage boy who seems to be simply evil, and has no redeeming qualities or reasons for wanting to destroy the lives of his parents, played by Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly. If anything, everything that has been reported about Miller’s behaviour seems to make We Need To Talk About Kevin even more effective, as it suggests that their performance was grounded in truth.
Kathryn Newton – ‘Freaky’ (Christopher Landon, 2020)
Blumhouse has famously succeeded by making cheap films that often elevate television stars and lesser-known actors, but Kathryn Newton has had a particularly tough run of being in bad projects. Freaky is a clever mashup of Friday the 13th and Freaky Friday, which sees Newton play a shy teenage girl who switches bodies with a ruthless slasher, played by Vince Vaughn.
It’s the best performance that Vaughn has given in quite some time because he effectively conveys the anxiety of what it feels like to play an awkward teenage girl, but Newton might be even better as the disturbed killer who relishes the character’s power while being back in high school. It’s a fully-rounded performance because Newton is able to play the ‘real’ version of the character in the beginning and ending scenes, providing the film with the perfect emotional bookends.
Katherine Heigl – ‘Knocked Up’ (Judd Apatow, 2007)
Judd Apatow has had a knack for finding a young crop of comedic talent to promote with each new film, and he was determined to make Seth Rogen a star after his early work in Freaks & Geeks and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Knocked Up was Apatow’s version of a raunchy, foul-mouthed romantic comedy, and Rogen was given an unexpected screen partner in Kathrine Heigl. The film works because these are two characters who couldn’t be more different, and are forced to salvage any connection they had because of an impossible situation.
While Heigl managed to torch her career within a year after it was released to rave reviews, making disparaging comments about Apatow and Rogen, it’s hard to deny how effective she is at playing an uptight character in Knocked Up, at least if the film can be viewed in a vacuum.
Zachary Levi – ‘Shazam!’ (David Sandberg, 2019)
DC Comics was so desperate to expand their cinematic universe after the negative responses to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad that they took a risk on making a more family-friendly, comedic superhero film with Shazam! Zachary Levi has always come across as a whiny, entitled clown who is impossible to take seriously, but this ironically made him perfect to take on the role of Billy Batson, the boy who transforms into a superhero.
The film draws a lot of inspiration from the Tom Hanks classic Big, and Levi is believable as a child who is exploring the potential of being in an adult’s body, but while the first film was a breath of fresh air after all the darkness of the Snyder era, Levi unfortunately ruined the character’s appeal when he returned for the sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Ashton Kutcher – ‘The Guardian’ (Andrew Davis, 2006)
Ashton Kutcher is fundamentally a television actor who is best-suited to playing exaggerated characters on the small screen, as his only claim to fame in film has been in ridiculous comedies, but The Guardian is an underrated drama in which he plays a reckless underachiever who finds his place as a member of the Coast Guard and earns the mentorship of a commanding officer played by Kevin Costner.
It’s the exact type of old-fashioned drama that the industry seems not to make anymore, combining the academic romanticism of An Officer and a Gentleman with the aquatic action of The Perfect Storm. Beyond simply being able to hold his own against Costner, Kutcher succeeds at showing the maturation of a character who grows into his responsibilities as both a public servant and a man. It’s an underrated film that sadly hasn’t inspired Kutcher to do any similar work.
