Actors who failed to live up to their potential (1 Viewer)

[Mikel_Cooperman]

It's weird how Hollywood works. Look at the two actresses in Mullholland Drive. Both great but Naomi Watts is the only one getting the roles.
Bad Agent? Bad choice of roles????

With Mark, his first role after Star Wars was Corvette Summer right and then The Big Red One. Both bombed at the box office. You are only as good as your last role in Hollywood terms.

 

[Michael Reuben]

I don't know about "showcasing", but it's astounding how many successful actors extol the virtues of working on soaps. It's a recurrent theme on Inside the Actors Studio.

M.

 

[Ruz-El]

I have to agree with alot of the above, as far as actors not seeming to have met their full potential.

Not to sound like a thread farting bastard but I can't be the only one who hates theater, can I? I can appreciate that it's hard work to have to do a performance every night, sometimes more, and that there is a long respected tradition of the stage, and that most of the highly respected movie actors of all time came from that tradition, but can anyone honestly tell me that movies like "Boogie Nights", "Magnolia", "Shortcuts" and virtually any other "character" drivin movie would be better represented by the stage? And don't get me started about films like "Bladerunner".

Maybe it's time for actors to start realizing their potential on film so that future generations can appreciate what they are doing, instead of holding their noses up at "movies" being the money making whore of the art world.

Okay, I'm done ranting.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

C'mon - the lady just won an Oscar two weeks ago, so I think it's a little early to speculate on future flops...

 

[Michael Reuben]

I don't know where you're getting that from. Certainly nothing in this thread.

M.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

No, you're not alone. I'm not a fan of theater acting at all because of the artifice. To me, it's not acting so much as it is OVERacting. Movie acting can be much truer to life because you don't have to project all your lines. Stage acting presents its own challenges and is probably tougher since you don't get any retakes, but I definitely don't see it as more artistically satisfying...

 

[Michael Reuben]

Not as true as it used to be. In most live performances today, even non-musicals, the actors are miked.

M.

 

[Chris]

Stage is it's own thing, as is art like Ballet, Music, Opera, etc..

When an actor/actress is also a stage performer, and they say they prefer the stage, it's possible to say "hey, I wish they were doing movies" but it doesn't make them a "failure to their potential"

I guess to me, a "failure to their potential" is someone who started in films and who then went to B-Grade DVD or really a series of horribly bad films.

If you leave movies to do stage, and that's your bit, then it's hard for me to play that as a giant negative. Matthew Broderick spends the majority of his time on the stage vs. film, and he's been much more successful on stage then film in the last several years. Doesn't mean he didn't live up to his potential, he went another direction, or maybe he found his true potential wasn't in the film medium.

 

[RobertW]

never saw this one coming.

someone mentioned f. murray abraham. i'll mentione a guy who always comes to mind when you mention abraham: frank langella. haven't seen him do a whole lot worthy of his talents. maybe i'm just not seeing the right movies.

the one problem i have with some names on this thread are some people seem to think that if the actor isn't in a bunch of movies, or a huge star, that they aren't living up to their potential. i think that they could be fulfilling their potential on the stage or in smaller films, without having to be a huge star necessarily. or character actors who are absolutely terrific, but probably due to the vagaries of the business will never become huge stars, but do great things in the roles they do get. brooke smith for example.

what i view as not fulfilling their potential are great actors slumming in relatively unchallenging parts or films. morgan freeman was mentioned earlier as one. however, i won't begrudge morgan freeman if he deires to make a ton of cash in his film roles, given how his success came to him rather late in life, after years of scraping by as an actor. easy reader, anyone?

 

[chris winters]

the other thing about stage acting is that becuase of it obviously being a live venue, the vast majority of the country does not get to see these productions. Maybe if plays toured the country as musical acts do, and actually hit ohio, michigan, kansas, washington, and everywhere besides new york, and L.A., we unwashed masses could partake in the wonderful performances those in the blue states take for granted. A large percentage of the country only gets to see these actors on T.V. or at their local multiplex.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"but can anyone honestly tell me that movies like "Boogie Nights", "Magnolia", "Shortcuts" and virtually any other "character" drivin movie would be better represented by the stage? And don't get me started about films like Bladerunner."

Sure, but where are the truly great cinema versions of pure-theatrical experiences like "Death of a Salesman", "Oedipus Rex", "Our Town", " and heaven forbid we start talking about epic works of theater like "Hamlet Machine" or the "Mahabbrata". I submit to you that the theater has it's own unique merits that cinema cannot duplicate -- the stage version of "The Lion King", for example, is a thrilling theatrical experience impossible to replicate to on a movie screen. The thrill of a live performance, the humanity and sense of moment, is also impossible to store on celluloid or a DVD. Watching Ian McKellan in Richard III is nothing like having the guy standing ten feet in front of you delivering the greatest words in the english language.

Also, film is decided for you, and it never changes. The director decides where he wants you to look, what exact takes he wants, and film edits break up the reality of the moment. In theater, YOU decide where you choose to look, each performance is always different in some way, and typically, events play out in real time.

Theater is a special art form, and cinema is a special art form. Theater is very much an actor's medium, while cinema, by and large, is a director's medium.

 

[PatrickL]

Frank Langella is one of my all-time favorite actors. Once again, he spends a lot of his career on stage (and in fact, I just saw him in a play also starring someone else mentioned here: Ray Liotta)

There's a seminar online from a couple of years ago in which six actors talk together about working in theatre (and also, tangentially, in film and television). I mention it because Langella's comments throughout about his craft are highly informed and insightful, and the rest of the participants - Mercedes Ruehl, Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin, Jeffrey Wright and John Lithgow - are all also known outside of theatre. Just throwing it out there; it's a very lively and interesting 90 minutes.

ATW Seminar: Performance, Spring 2002

 

[Colin Jacobson]

But they still need to emote - even if their lines are heard, they need to make other expressions broad enough for all to see. It remains inherently and necessarily much broader than film acting...

 

[Michael Reuben]

Geez, Patrick, that play just started previews last weekend (Match). You're hardcore.

Langella won last year's Tony award for best featured actor. (His co-star, the late, great Alan Bates, won for best lead actor in the same production, Fortune's Fool.) In recent years he's also starred in Strindberg's The Father on Broadway and in Cyrano de Bergerac off-Broadway. He's kept himself busy.

Except that theater isn't about close-ups. Skilled actors can use their entire body to emote, and not worry about what the camera won't see.

Colin, I don't know what productions you've seen or who's appeared in them, but most of the theater acting I've seen in recent years has been as naturalistic as anything on film (unless of course the material called for something larger-than-life, as is also the case in many movies).

M.

 

[Jason Walstrom]

Rutger Hauer, after watching Blade Runner and The Hitcher you'd think he'd be well on his way to movie stardom but wound up doing straight to video fare.

 

[Claire Panke]

Amen, Michael and Patrick.

Actors are able to show a different, and often broader, range on stage than in film roles. Due to the nature of movies (typecasting not least, the fact that the director ultimately controls the performance, the shortage of quality films and quality parts with enough screen time), the theater audience often gets to see an actor paint a performance with many more colors than one might have thought was previously in his/her palette.

As compelling as Ian McKellen is in Gods & Monsters, Richard III and LOTR, he is simply astoundingly good live, on stage. Ditto Derek Jacoby.

Many actors whom you may not have been impressed with in movies or on TV often reveal themselves to be very fine stage actors indeed. You will also find favorite film actors display heretofore unsuspected comedic, musical or dramatic chops on stage.

This lesson was first brought home to me as a young teen when I say Ray Walston in a touring production of The Canterbury Tales. Needless to say, knowing him only from My Favorite Martian, I was expecting very little. (I was blissfully unaware of his Broadway career and for some reason had never seen the film version of Damn Yankees.) TCBT was just OK, but Walston was wonderful, a marvel of comic timing. Lesson learned: you can't always judge an actor totally by what you see on a screen, large or small. Not enough actors get to use the whole range of their talent in movies and TV - more of them get to do so on stage.

Since my teens I've been lucky enough to see some very fine actors in plays whose screen roles have not proved as amenable as their stage roles: Rufus Sewell, Robert Lindsay, Frank Langella, Jeremy Piven...and some equally fine thespians whose careers have been very high profile indeed: Jon Lithgow, Ian McKellen, John Malkovich, Brian Dennehy, Hugh Jackman. The freshness and skill these actors brought to their performances is something I wouldn't have missed for the world. (I'm leaving out a bunch of names of filmfolk I've seen onstage, I'll probably think of more later. Then again, there are those performers...like Madonna...who think they can act, and try to take tread the boards...in Mamet...on Broadway...and fall flat on their faces. Seriously, every single person in my senior high school play could act better than Madonna.)

I LOVE movies. But I also love live theater. Either art form can thrilling, but they are ultimately quite different. How I envy you folks in NY who get to see almost ALL the goodies. (Although, Chicago gets its fair share, and it's less than three hours away.)

OTOH, I would be broke all the time if I lived in NYC.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"But they still need to emote - even if their lines are heard, they need to make other expressions broad enough for all to see. It remains inherently and necessarily much broader than film acting..."

My BFA is in acting from UT. There are dozens of modes of stage acting, from the Greeks and the use of masks all the way up to the hyper-naturalism of a Pinter play. Depending on the text and the point of view of the creative team, and the space you're working in, you can be as natural as you want, or as broad as the side of a barn. It just depends on what play you're doing, and where you're doing it. Some plays allow for broad action, and therefore, can be performed in large venues. Other plays are quiet and initimate, and require smaller venues to appreciate their effect. In other words, you don't do Burn This at the Metropolitan Opera House, and you don't do The Music Man in a 50-seat shoebox theater in Santa Monica.

As for the statement that stage acting is inherently broader than film acting, I sort of see this from another perspective. I don't see theater as being inherently broad with film being, say, "natural", because theater can be agonizingly natural depending on the text and the space, whereas film acting, to me, is very unnatural for the actor. In film acting, how you stand, smile or even breathe is beholden to the needs of the shot. When you have a camera in your face, the smallest twitch of your cheek can get blown up to enormous size on a cinema screen, and so this forces you to reign in and control your instrument to a very exacting degree. And yet, people don't normally behave or emote in such small manners. What plays as unreal on the film set for an actor ("You want me to look where?") can play real on the screen, it only matters what is being captured through the point of view of the camera. You can stage a shot where - on the set - two actors aren't even really looking at each other and are playing to dead air, and yet, through the lens, they appear to be conversing naturally. Very unnatural, and yet it looks natural.

Michael Caine once famously said of screen acting, "if theater is acting with a scalpel, then film is acting with a laser". What he's trying to get at is the exacting precision required for film. To me, this has always been unnatural, while in theater, you can breathe. The "size" of the performance ultimately depends on the text and the space in stage acting. You can do a quiet, personal, highly-natural piece, with people speaking in low voices or even whispers, or you can act in a broad cartoonish style in romps like Tom Jones. And this doesn't even begin to address specific requirements like restoration theater, or Shakespeare, or Kabuki theater, or masked Greek theater. So I don't think there is an inherent "broad" nature to acting in the theater -- although there is an inherent "broad" nature to certain texts and styles, which, I suppose, could also be said for certain films.

 

[Don Giro]

Nicolas Cage is a good example of the intention of my original post. Here's an actor who received accolades for films like "Moonstruck" and won the Best Actor Academy Award for his excellent performance in "Leaving Las Vegas," then followed his win with a slew of big-budget action films.

I have no problem with his decisions. I'm sure he's never looked back after the big paycheck he received for the enjoyable "Con Air," but did anyone expect him to become an action hero so soon after the Big Win? Didn't you think he was destined for more "serious" films?

Cage defended himself by saying he WANTED to be an action hero and that he enjoyed films like "Con Air" and "The Rock." However, there were folks who believed Cage had somehow let everyone down (including himself) by following such a great performance with a series of summer blockbusters.

And speaking of "Leaving Las Vegas" and the spirit of this thread...what ever happened to Elisabeth Shue? (As fantastic as she was in "LLV," it's always "Adventures in Babysitting" I remember most fondly.)

 

[Holadem]

She was the best part of Hollow Man.

--
H

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

I hadnt thought of him but he didnt hit as big as he deserved. Great looks and a good actor so why no big parts?
Did his looks hurt him?