Five awful acting performances hidden inside movie masterpieces
Lots of things make a movie great—a well-crafted script, an emotional score, top-notch production design—but the thing that most people care about is the acting. The people pretending to be other people are usually the biggest draw with any film, so they need to get it right.
It’s relatively easy to act well in a good film. You usually have talented co-stars to bounce off and a great director to guide you through the process. What’s much harder is to turn in a bad performance while everyone else is knocking it out of the park.
These five thespians aren’t necessarily bad actors. In fact, some of them have gone on to win some of the biggest prizes in the game. Unfortunately, they were having serious off days when they made these pictures, which was made all the more obvious by everyone else being on their A-game.
Next time you put on one of these films, keep your eyes peeled for these shockingly bad portrayals. Actually, you won’t need to try too hard to spot them. They all stick out like sore thumbs.
Five awful acting performances in great movies:
5. Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis as two warring mob men in 19th-century New York, Gangs of New York is a typically excellent offering from Martin Scorsese. As well as delivering a fiery script, an engrossing world, and Thelma Schoonmaker’s watertight editing, it’s packed with brilliant performances. Day-Lewis’ trademark method approach to playing William ‘Bill the Butcher’ Cutting left his co-star speechless, and he was showered with awards nominations following the film’s release. Jim Broadbent, John C Reilly, and Stephen Graham also provide spirited supporting roles. Then there’s Cameron Diaz…
Diaz was cast as Jenny Everdeane, an Irish-American pickpocket who becomes a love interest for DiCaprio’s character. She is by far and away the most featured and important female character in the entire movie. You could go as far as to say she’s the only relevant woman in the whole thing – and she stinks. The main issue with Diaz’s performance is her ‘Irish’ accent, widely regarded as one of the worst in the history of cinema. She simply doesn’t fit the role at all and drags down every single scene she’s in. And yet, she was nominated for a Golden Globe! Make it make sense!
4. Casey Affleck in Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014)
There’s a strong case to be made for Interstellar as Christopher Nolan’s best movie. The galaxy-hopping scope of the story is the perfect cradle for the director’s massive ideas, which often derail some of his smaller projects. Then there are the performances. Matthew McConaughey completes his ‘McConaissance’ with all the gravitas his role demands, while Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway create the two most compelling female characters in Nolan’s catalogue. Although that’s sadly not saying much. Even a young Timothée Chalamet pops up as a young version of McConaughey’s character’s son.
Unfortunately, things go off the rails once Timmy grows up. The older version of Tom is played by Casey Affleck, who is far from the Oscar winner he would become a few years later. Tom, who is meant to be something of a tertiary antagonist back on Earth, is thunderingly dull. Affleck plays him with all the enthusiasm of someone tying their shoelaces, even when he’s going through extreme trauma. Thankfully, he’s not in the movie for very long—not enough to ruin it, anyhow—but his scenes are clearly the low point of an otherwise epic tale.
3. Jude Law in Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011)
Remember when the pandemic first took off and everyone started watching Contagion? The human race are a weird bunch. From director Steven Soderbergh, the movie (allegedly getting a sequel) tracks a highly infectious and deadly disease as it spreads across the globe, bringing fear and panic wherever it goes. Soderbergh went out of his way to make the film feel as real as possible, even consulting the World Health Organisation on the real science of his fictional virus. It clearly worked, because people were willing to stomach it while a real health crisis raged on outside.
Contagion is packed with famous faces. Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow — all of them play characters whose lives are rocked by this new normal. Jude Law also crops up, although most people were praying for the virus to get him within a matter of seconds. Law’s character, a conspiracy theorist named Alan, is supposed to represent the human element of a natural threat. Unfortunately, it’s hard to take him seriously when he’s sporting a truly terrible Australian accent. Imagine the worst accent you’ve ever heard and then make it 60% more annoying. Why Soderbergh couldn’t have hired an actual Aussie remains a mystery.
2. Lenny Montana in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
It would be hard to find anyone who doesn’t rate The Godfather. Well, apart from Peter Griffin in that one Family Guy episode, but are you really going to trust his opinion on classic cinema? Most people who aren’t cartoons see Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster epic as a true masterpiece. In terms of performances, most of the flowers go to the great Marlon Brando, who redefined his legacy with his oft-imitated portrayal of Vito Corleone. There are also great showings from Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and Diane Keaton. Not everybody, though, is on that same level.
Lenny Montana, a former pro wrestler and real-life mob enforcer, plays Luca Brasi. The personal hatchet man of Don Corleone, even Vito himself fears this beast of a man. What he really should have been afraid of was Montana’s acting, which is too much at all times. He plays Brasi like a parody of a gangster, a few dodgy hand motions away from being downright offensive. Given he spent time with the actual Mafia, you’d have thought Montana would have nailed this part, but this was only his second big-screen appearance, so maybe we should cut the big guy some slack.
1. Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
In terms of ‘bad performances in good movies’, they don’t come much more infamous than poor Keanu Reeves in another Coppola joint, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The maestro’s take on the classic vampire tale redefined the story for many younger viewers when it came out in the early 1990s. Gary Oldman gives an astonishing performance as the bloodsucking Count, who becomes infatuated with the pure and chaste Mina Harker (Winona Ryder). Anthony Hopkins is fantastic as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Tom Waits is cast perfectly as Drac’s old servant, R M Renfield.
Reeves was up against it from the start. He was playing Jonathan Harker, the default straight man in a plot full of eccentric gothic personalities. He also lacked the acting chops of his co-stars, as heartbreaking as that is. His performance was brought up in almost every glowing review of the film, and never in a good way. Bland, wooden, uninteresting — all of these words and more were used to describe his snore-inducing turn. Nicholas Hoult proved in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu that you can make the Harker character worth watching, but that revelation came too little, too late for one of Hollywood’s nicest guys.
