Bottom 10: #7

Josh here Fagan fans.  Having done the first three (or so) of the bottom ten, it has become abundantly clear to me that I am not working on a list of the worst actors (though there have been some bad actors that I have put on this list) but rather that I am listing off who I think is the most overrated or over-hyped.  Let's face it, if I was doing the worst movie actors all of the participants on this list would have appeared in B-comedies, direct to DVD sequels, or a Jerry Bruckheimer film (I'm comin' for you Nic!).  No, instead the actors on this list are actors who have been in movies that I have paid money to see, some of which I have enjoyed, many of them I have not.  Our next actor has played a single character for over 30-years, but still has us all fooled.  I even like some of his movies, but not because of him.

#7 – Jack Nicholson

Let me say something good about him first.  His facial expressions are amazing.  When God was giving out eyebrows, Jack asked for the most expressive ones and got 'em!  Here is where he can actually act.  He can make his face say any of a million things; if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture of Jack's face is a 4-volume textbook on expressions.  

Enough regaling.

Here is Jack's fatal flaw (in my humble opinion): while I like many of his movies, he is ALWAYS simply playing the same character but at different volumes of pomp and bombast.  I will eventually make a top 10 and be forced to include Johnny Depp for the exact opposite reason that I am including Jack on this list.  While I don't like most of Johnny's movies, he never plays the same character twice, unless of course you count the four times he's played Cap'n Jack Sparrow (oh by the way, thanks to Jerry Bruckheimer there will most likely be a 5th and 6th time for the ol' Cap'n).  Jack Nicholson has now been playing himself in major Hollywood movies since before I was born.  Again, the movies aren't bad, but I cannot call that good acting.

I am sitting here perusing his IMDb page, and I love these movies, but I am thinking about his performance in each of them and I end up thinking of a loud, angry man; sometimes he's dying, sometimes he's killing, sometimes he womanizing, but always there is a large anchor in the performance that is a.) loud, and b.) angry.  I suppose we shouldn't knock him for knowing what he can do as an actor, but as was said of Will Smith in the previous post, he isn't stretching himself and becoming the awesome actor he could have been.  Instead he made a bunch of movies that were good, and often good because of him, but only because it is the one character he can play.

In his defense, again, sometimes life is knowing your limitations, but sometimes life is trying to live beyond those limitations.  Jack has been living within them for longer than I can remember.