fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5211 ]

[ SECRET POST #5211 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5211 ⌋

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What constitutes "bad acting" for you?

Personally, if I feel like I could be doing the same thing and match or exceed whatever the performance is, you're not very good & could use some training.

blank staring and no show of emotion whatsoever and/or unconvincing line readings. Drives me bloody mad.

When you can't remember a character's name even after the movie has said it aloud dozens of times and instead you just call the character by the actor's name and nobody questions it because they don't care what the character's name is either. The actor is just playing themselves anyway so whatever.

Happens all the time with Jennifer Anniston, Ryan Gosling, Christopher Walken, Jesse Eisenberg, and Seth Rogen.

I feel this applies to Robert Downey Jr. and Martin Freeman, too. But people don't usually criticize their acting... quite the opposite in Freeman's case.

The main issue with Martin Freeman is that he stopped too late (or rather never stopped) to accept every single role that typecast him in the grumpy English Everyman role so his filmography looks like this is the only thing he can do.

Nah, I think he's just playing himself. Worryingly I even feel this way about him in Fargo.

Lack of commitment is a big thing for me, too-- like, there are actors who have been great but who will take a project and then phone it in, so it's not a cut and dry 'good actor'/'bad actor'.

There are some actors who are decent enough if the director knows what to do with them/if the part they're playing suits what talent they do have, but who will never really rise beyond a certain level and you know when you see them trying something above that level, like you know exactly which stock facial expression is coming when they need to react to someone...

It's definitely one of those 'I know it when I see it' things-- there are a lot of reasons a performance might be bad, and I can analyze them when I'm watching them, but it's harder to sit down and make a list of all the things that might go into bad acting.

Two things:

1: No actual recognizable expression of emotion when there logically should be (accounting for character personality, some are more stoic than others), or alternately such blatant displays of specific emotion ("Look, I'm HAPPY! Now I'm ANGRY!") without any sort of nuance that it looks like a parody of that emotion. (This is the flip side of how I recognize good acting - if someone can actually convey a combination of several different emotional reactions that a character might be having at the moment, like I can tell the difference in the course of an argument from when a character is angry to when they become simply frustrated.)

2: Recognizable expressions of emotion and such, but the same personality and mannerisms in every freaking role, and then you see them in an interview and oh guess what, that's just them, they're not acting at all.

When it's clear the actor doesn't understand their character, or when they can't be bothered to anticipate immediate events or other actors' words/actions. When they can't immerse themselves in the world as though they are actually part of that fictional world.

Though IMO sometimes a shitty script or a bad director can unfairly cast the blame on the actor.

That's a terrible benchmark, because people drastically overestimate their ability to do shit all the time, and the chance that you're the exception is slim to nil.

Strongly agree. I'm a background actor (which is not at all the same as being an actor actor), so I spend a lot of time on film sets, and straight up, even bad acting is way better than most people can manage. (I include myself in this. I've never done any actual acting, but I assume I'd be terrible at it.)

Everybody thinks they can act, until you give them lines and blocking and aim a camera at them. And then suddenly it's like your brain falls out of your head. Nothing comes out right.

Sure, there is the odd exception—someone who just has a knack for it even though they've never done it before. But a LOT of people think they're that person, and hardly anybody actually is that person.

HOnestly, I can accept a whole lot if the movie or tv is something I'm enjoying, especially if most of the rest of the cast is good and it is just one person. Honestly, I don't notice that much.

I guess for me it would be when all I can see is the actor, not the character. So it can depend on the role. Because some typical "bad actor" things work for some roles, like lack of emotion or what not actually make sense for some characters. And then on the other hand, some actors who are great in some specific roles then play that same thing over and over again and you never see them playing anything different and to me that's bad acting.

Basically, as long as I can immerse myself in the media and believe, I'm good. If I'm thrown out and start seeing the actor rather than the character, that's when I'm likely to think there is bad acting going on.

I still think everyone doing method acting isnt actually a good actor.

And I think you may not actually understand what actors or acting coaches mean when they refer to "method acting"

I do because I personally know enough of people who do it.

Line delivery is the basic bar to clear for me. I will accept that non-verbal acting is a higher level of skill that I can't reasonably expect in less, uh, quality productions. But this is the job you were hired to do: read the lines and don't take me out of the scene by sounding overdramatic, emotionless, or otherwise ridiculous.

I don't even expect it 100% of the time, but some actors are just so bad it's honestly rarer for them to get it right than not.

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[ SECRET POST #5211 ]

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