Five iconic actors who never delivered a good performance
Saying what is and isn’t a good acting performance is incredibly subjective. After all, what is mind-blowing and transformative to one person may be cringeworthy to another. For every cinephile who watches an actor shoot for the moon with a character and believes they achieved transcendence, someone else probably thinks, “Can’t Nic Cage just play a normal guy for once?”
Having different opinions on art is one of the reasons life is such a rich tapestry, though. Actors like Cage, Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, and Mark Wahlberg may be some people’s idea of the worst actors who ever worked in Hollywood. Equally, they’re also probably the favourites of a good swathe of the film-watching population. Well, except maybe Wahlberg.
To say an actor has never given a good performance, though, is big. A hot take, if you will. Maybe even the hottest take. For this list, then, I’ve tried to go with actors who have displayed a special level of ineptitude that the majority of filmgoers stand a chance of agreeing with. Having said that, there will undoubtedly be entries that some readers won’t agree with – and that’s fine.
Here are my picks for the five iconic actors who never gave a good performance. From cinema’s original western hero to a modern comedy giant and a member of an acting dynasty, I’d argue these stars have never truly been “good”.
Stars who never gave a good performance:
John Wayne
For the first entry on this list, it’s hard to look past the patron saint of iconic stars who were actually dreadful actors. These days, John Wayne has a diminished reputation thanks to the countless Hollywood types who have revealed the true extent of how awful he was as a person, both politically and personally. Indeed, a lot of people who worked with him over the years hated him, and he hated them right back. But for this article, we’re only going to concentrate on his performances as Hollywood’s original tough guy – and they’re uniformly bad.
In many ways, Wayne was the precursor to later taciturn action stars like Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger – guys who made careers out of playing slight variations on a similar character archetype. In truth, those stars also faced accusations at times from critics and audiences who said they couldn’t act, but if you go back and watch Wayne films from the ’40s and ’50s, the difference is night and day. The man was so wooden that he may as well have been made of mahogany, and he barely ever attempted even the slightest variation in his style.
Even worse, though, Wayne was so terrible at acting that he couldn’t even recognise the talents of a good actor when they were right in front of his face. Wayne’s daughter Aissa once revealed that there was one rising star in the ’70s that her father truly couldn’t stand, and he “could never appear on-screen without my father skewering his performance.” He dubbed this star “the worst actor in town” and wrote him off as “awful”. Who was this abjectly terrible performer who Wayne lambasted so thoroughly? Gene Hackman. Yes, the same Hackman, who most cinephiles agree is one of the greatest to ever do it.
Madonna
According to the infamous Golden Raspberry Awards, Madonna is statistically the worst actor of all time. After all, the iconic pop star has won an unprecedented eight ‘Worst Actress’ awards at that ignominious ceremony, landing dubious trophies for her performances in Shanghai Surprise, Who’s That Girl, Body of Evidence, Four Rooms, The Next Best Thing, Swept Away, and Die Another Day. “But wait,” we hear you ask. “That’s only seven movies.” Well, yes, to add insult to injury, the Razzies also awarded Madge with the ‘Worst Actress of the Century’ gong in 2000.
Now, loathe though I am to agree with the Razzies, which is an outdated institution that doesn’t really serve any good in the film industry, it’s hard to argue with them on Madonna’s acting chops. In the annals of musicians who have tried their hands at acting, she’s got to be the worst. In truth, she’s had more than enough chances to deliver a halfway decent performance over the years, but even her turns in good movies like Dick Tracy and A League of Their Own have fallen flat.
Many people may point to Madonna’s Golden Globe-winning performance as Eva Perón in 1996’s Evita as proof that she actually performed well in her career. However, that has to go down as one of the most egregious decisions in the recent history of awards shows. Hell, even Patti LuPone, who played Peron to Tony-winning effect in 1980, was scathing about Madonna’s performance, saying, “It was a piece of shit. Madonna is a movie killer. She’s dead behind the eyes. She cannot act her way out of a paper bag. She should not be in film, or onstage.”
Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel may be the most successful actor in history to have never given a good performance. There are one-note performers, and then there is Mr Diesel, a man so resolutely one-note that it makes you wonder if he knows there are other notes he could play. Having said that, Diesel has no need to care about what his critics say about him because he has one of the biggest franchises in movie history to constantly fall back on – and when millions of people love you glowering, talking about family, and driving fast cars, does it really matter if you can’t act?
To give Diesel some credit, he has tried to expand his horizons beyond Dominic Toretto and the Fast and Furious franchise several times. He made three Riddick movies and two XXX’s, as well as supernatural/science-fiction hokum like The Last Witch Hunter, Bloodshot, and Babylon AD. The problem is that none of those movies were as successful as they needed to be, so he always fell back into the warm embrace of a cool Corona and nitrous oxide gas. That’s what turns the cars in Fast and Furious into gravity-defying super vehicles, fact fans.
In all these films, though, Diesel’s acting never changes. He speaks slowly, in that deep voice, while flexing his muscles and trying desperately to muster a human emotion to the surface of his face – but it never quite comes. He’s like Jason Statham if he was given a charisma bypass or Steven Seagal if somehow a watchable movie accidentally formed around him from time to time. Not good.
Kevin Hart
In his stand-up performances, Kevin Hart is more than capable of raising a chuckle or even a belly laugh. Sure, he’s not exactly the most nuanced comedian to ever grace a stage, and a lot of his laughs come from his exaggerated delivery and diminutive stature – but sometimes that’s all it takes to send people home happy. The problem with Hart is that, in nearly every one of his acting roles, he’s simply porting his stand-up persona over to the silver screen and rarely trying to bring anything new to the table.
To prove the point, think of some of Hart’s biggest movies and consider if he is ever the main reason why the film works. In the Ride Along movies, do audiences laugh because of Hart, or do they laugh because of Ice Cube’s hilarious reactions to him being annoying? In Get Hard and Central Intelligence, is Hart giving us everything he has, or are we laughing because Will Ferrell is trying to act tough, and Dwayne Johnson is so hulkingly massive compared to Hart? Similarly, in the Jumanji movies, Hart arguably plays fourth fiddle to Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Johnson.
Even when Hart tried to stretch himself into dramatic territory with The Upside and Fatherhood, there was something that just rang false about it. Sure, when he’s acting opposite someone as fiercely compelling as Bryan Cranston, he gets the closest he’s ever gotten to a good performance – but is his cliched turn in that middling remake truly “good?”
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore once told the New York Times, “I don’t think I’m a good actor. I feel like it’s fake and yucky, and it doesn’t ring true.” Now, she followed that up with, “But if you research and you study and make it personal, you just become that person, and it’s your truth, and everything else around you falls away. Then you’re telling the truth; it’s not lying, it’s not fake.”
However, it’s hard not to think she was on the right track with the first half of the statement, more than the second – because she’s never given a good performance in her career.
For our money, Barrymore hit the nail on the head when she said her performances don’t ring true. Whether it’s her high-kicking role in the Charlie’s Angels movies, her romcom efforts with Adam Sandler, or even the times she’s tried to get “serious” in the likes of Donnie Darko and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, there’s always something off about Barrymore. It’s like she’s in on a joke with the audience, even when she shouldn’t be, or that she’s aware of the artifice of cinema and can’t help pointing it out to you with every half-smile or off-kilter line delivery.
In recent years, Barrymore has become a bit of a lightning rod thanks to her incredibly cringeworthy talk show and her willingness to scab on her colleagues in Hollywood. She’s also a prime example of the “nepo baby” criticism that is thrown around a lot these days. After all, she undoubtedly had a leg up in her career because she hails from the Barrymore acting dynasty. Putting all that aside, though, there are plenty of reasons to throw shade at her purely for her acting – or lack thereof – alone.
