First Annual Overrated Actors List
Hate to hear that your favorite book of all time is being turned into a movie—starring the latest bad actor that Hollywood’s trying to cram down your throat? Me too. Check out my list of people I’m sick of seeing onscreen and a few others that I would love to see more of. Add your own people to the list!
Completely Overrated
*Entire Cast of Atonement, especially:
Keira Knightley—I’ll give her this: she’s a worker. But I defy you to name a single movie or expensive star vehicle (through which she’s been shoved into our collective consciousness) that she’s carried from beginning to end. (Oscar nod for Pride and Prejudice? Hollywood’s typically premature crowning). The latest letdown in the making: The Duchess. Check out the trailer and tell me that after two minutes of build-up where they show her only from the back, you didn’t go, “Oh. It’s Keira Knightley,” when they finally reveal her face.
James McAvoy— The shortness of Tom Cruise without the high-wattage Top Gun-era charisma.
The rest:
Natalie Portman— I’ll give her The Professional, Closer and like five minutes of The Other Boleyn Girl, where she displayed some passion, otherwise has earned more goodwill for her just-so beauty and straight-arrow lifestyle than her wooden acting.
Katherine Heigl—In both Grey’s Anatomy and 27 Dresses, she’s the girl who wants you to think she’s just like you, but secretly thinks she’s better than you. That somehow comes through in every performance and we’ll be seeing a lot more of that, now that she’s positioning herself as the new rom-com princess (The Ugly Truth, with Gerald Butler, is next).
Jaime Foxx—Can we finally admit that Ray was not even that good?
Gwyneth Paltrow—It’s a good thing that family comes first for her, so we see that much less of this career pouter and eyelash-batter in lead roles.
Orlando Bloom—One word: Legolas. OK, two more: Can’t act.
Lifetime overrated achievement award: Julia Roberts
On the Bubble
Jennifer Garner—Hated her before she rocked the sh*t out of her role in Juno. Can she dig that deep again?
Ellen Page—Yes, she was funny and cute in Juno, but that didn’t seem like a stretch for her. Can she hold our attention beyond current flicks like Smart People and The Tracey Fragments?
Penelope Cruz—English bad. Spanish good. If she sticks with la lengua de Cervantes, she’ll be OK.
Hilary Swank—Awesome in Boys Don’t Cry, good in Million Dollar Baby, miscast and cloying in P.S. I Love You. You see the pattern here.
Reese Witherspoon—She left indie land(Election) for Hollywood mainstream (Legally Blonde, Walk the Line), long ago, but I wish she’d make big commercial projects with a bit more heft, ala Nicole Kidman.
Underrated and Underused
Rachel McAdams—Maybe she doesn’t belong here. Maybe the reason that we haven’t seen all that much of her in high-profile movies since The Notebook (in which she was the definite highlight), is not that she’s being overlooked, but that she’s being choosy and taking the un-Keira road. We hope.
Josh Brolin—Completely overlooked for his subtle work in No Country for Old Men and American Gangster, he’s come a long way since The Goonies.
Eva Mendes—I hear you chuckling, but did you see We Own the Night? Pretty not bad. I think my girl-crush has potential. Like pre-superstardom Jennifer Lopez, she’s has a definite onscreen watchability, and given the right director (in Jennifer’s case, Steven Soderbergh) or project (I’m hoping that for Eva, that’s the upcoming The Women), she can pull it out.
Clifton Collins—One of the few Latinos that has managed not to be pigeonholed, Clifton has done great work as three-dimensional baddies in Capote, Traffic and TV’s Thief. Criminally underused in Babel (as a mere border guard), he’ll be in the high-profile Star Trek, but he’s got chops to do much more.
Thandie Newton—She showed some depth as the seething, violated bap in Crash. She deserves better than Run Fatboy Run and Norbit.
Tracee Ellis Ross—Drop-dead gorgeous and screen presence for days. Can’t someone get her into a project, any kind of project?
Lifetime underrated award: Dennis Quaid
You are so very mistakened. Dennis Quaid was extremely rude on the set of the “Alamo”….and if it makes you feel better guess who the majority of the extras were? Us minorities. I always cringe when I see him in a movie.
Now I will give you credit on Katherine Heigl. I can’t stand her. She’s not funny, has no stage presence nor charisma, and gets by her conventional look.
I loved your list! I totally agree with most of the overrated actors, and some of the bubble ones. thanks for the entertaining post.