Biggest Acting, Best and Worst: Over the top, Ma!

Julianne Moore in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" comes to mind for this. Many people (check it's imdb forum) think it ruins the movie. I mean, some absolutely loathe it. It does feel like a lot, but I think it should be. How else would that person react in her situation?

I love Jeffrey Wright's hugely entertaining supporting turn in the Samuel L. Jackson Shaft remake. Wright's character -- a drug kingpin, with the great name of Peoples Hernandez -- is a cliche, but the performance sure isn't. Wright somehow makes him unpredictable in every scene: my favorite being when he meets Christian Bale's racist killer, and quietly expresses his admiration for "Tiger Woo." I remember Entertainment Weekly hailed Wright's work as "Best Overacting" for the year it came out; can't recall what the worst was.

I hope you will not think it too obnoxious to link two posts but I have just recently posted on understated and overstated acting. The first post I did in July and the second is my current post dealing with Gene Kelly actors and Fred Astaire actors, that is, actors that make it look difficult and actors that make it look easy. My answers are provided within.

And oh yeah, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar - I'm in total agreement.

Canned Ham

The Kelly Astaire Paradigm

One of my favorite performances of all time, but one that is extremely "over-the-top" would have to be George C. Scott in Patton. But to extend the point that sometimes we NEED over-the-top; if he hadn't played that role as he did, it would have fallen flat. The real General Patton was a character himself, and presented himself in a way anyone would consider too much if it was portrayed on screen. My point is that it's an absolutely amazing performance BECAUSE it goes as far as it does. Imagine if George C. Scott had played it down, gone for more subtlety? Would it have been such a memorable role? I personally doubt it.

As for roles that make me cringe... Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered comes to mind. He pushes things so far it just gets... disturbing. And not in an entertaining way, but in a simply revolting way. I think that anyone who's seen the film can agree: it's the worst of the worst.

It's fitting that you bring this up, since "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" was [inexplicably?] just added to the Great Movies list. I find Bette Davis' performance in the film to be among the worst - if not THE worst - of her career.

It's not just that it's over-the-top - the effectiveness of a performance largely depends on the tone, style and genre of the film. The problem with Davis' performance is just that it's completely one-note - and completely easy. In contrast to Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond, the performance essentially has no frame of reference with anything resembling humanity or pathos. Nothing else operating under, above, or anywhere near the surface. It's beyond camp value. It's easy, cartoonish posturing. There are no emotional forces pulling her - internally or externally - and thus, the performance seems remarkably easy. I mean, anyone can just go all out and act as crazy as possible without regard for any actual human emotion or instinct - theatrical or otherwise. That's what Davis does - and her performance comes across as cheap and shallow.

I'm watching one of those right now: Steve Martin in "The Jerk" - an apt title. The other actor who makes me cringe is Jack Nicholson, in just about everything e.g. The Witches of Eastwick.

On the flip side, the femme fatales in the Batman movies seemed relish the scenery they were chewing - Thurman, Kidman, and especially Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. Not so sure about Danny de Vito's Penguin, though.

Oddly enough, some of the most memorable over-the-top performances for me are from three movies from 1984: Albert Finney in "Under the Volcano," Robert De Niro in "Once Upon a Time in America," and Tom Hulce in "Amadeus."

Finney's performance as the alcoholic British consul running amok in the heart of Mexico is one which I purely admire and enjoy. There are moments of his drunken antics which are both hilarious (i.e. when he wakes up in the middle of the street) and heart-wrenchingly sad (his "too much moderation" speech after the bullfight-"Hell is my natural habitat"). No matter which scene, his presence in "Under the Volcano" is always powerful and touching.

I still don't know what to think of De Niro's performance in "Once Upon a Time in America." No matter how many times I watch it (the unbutchered 229-minute cut is an epic masterpiece), I cannot get over how awkward some of the scenes are with De Niro. His adult version of the character Noodles bears no resemblance to the young Noodles- De Niro presents an uncontrollably and unpredictably eccentric mobster whose sexual exploits almost ruin the movie; case in point, the scene with him and Elizabeth McGovern in the back of the car- anyone who has seen the movie has cringed at that scene. Hell, De Niro even lacks chemistry with Joe Pesci! So while overall I love the movie and De Niro is still De Niro, his scenes are unnecessarily over-the-top.

And as for Tom Hulce's depiction of Mozart in "Amadeus"- even the other characters in the movie find that high-pitched wail of a laugh of his to be worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. Despite the laugh, his performance is a delight and the perfect counterpart to F. Murray Abraham's depressing Salieri.

Oddly enough, some of the most memorable over-the-top performances for me are from three movies from 1984: Albert Finney in "Under the Volcano," Robert De Niro in "Once Upon a Time in America," and Tom Hulce in "Amadeus."

Finney's performance as the alcoholic British consul running amok in the heart of Mexico is one which I purely admire and enjoy. There are moments of his drunken antics which are both hilarious (i.e. when he wakes up in the middle of the street) and heart-wrenchingly sad (his "too much moderation" speech after the bullfight-"Hell is my natural habitat"). No matter which scene, his presence in "Under the Volcano" is always powerful and touching.

I still don't know what to think of De Niro's performance in "Once Upon a Time in America." No matter how many times I watch it (the unbutchered 229-minute cut is an epic masterpiece), I cannot get over how awkward some of the scenes are with De Niro. His adult version of the character Noodles bears no resemblance to the young Noodles- De Niro presents an uncontrollably and unpredictably eccentric mobster whose sexual exploits almost ruin the movie; case in point, the scene with him and Elizabeth McGovern in the back of the car- anyone who has seen the movie has cringed at that scene. Hell, De Niro even lacks chemistry with Joe Pesci! So while overall I love the movie and De Niro is still De Niro, his scenes are unnecessarily over-the-top.

And as for Tom Hulce's depiction of Mozart in "Amadeus"- even the other characters in the movie find that high-pitched wail of a laugh of his to be worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. Despite the laugh, his performance is a delight and the perfect counterpart to F. Murray Abraham's depressing Salieri.

Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast.

Because you cannot stop thinking to yourself: "It's GHANDI! He's an animal!"

what is interesting is that Ian McShane gives an equally powerful performance in that film, but his psychosis is far more introverted.

Does David Thewlis give a big, over-the-top performance in "Naked" (it's difficult to tell, since he's contending with the also-impressive Greg Cruttwell)? I've always been partial to that turn.

And then there's a lot more (perhaps more suitable) over-acting favorites: Fiona Shaw in "Black Dahlia" (I'm probably one of the few to think that her histrionics were amazing), Anthony Perkins and Kathleen Turner in "Crimes of Passion" (another pair of supremely divisive performances, but, I mean, it's a Ken Russell flick), John Heard in "Cutter's Way", Steve Martin in "The Jerk", Warren Oates in "Two-Lane Blacktop" (nicely balanced by the two most comatosed performances of all time), and Walter Huston in both "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." And so many more...

And I rather liked Daniel Day Lewis in TWBB, though I still prefer his Bill the Butcher. "Is your mouth all glued up with cunny juice?" so deserves the catch-phrase status the public saw fit to bestow upon "I drink your milkshake".

Speaking of Albert Finney, did anyone think his recent performance as the patriarch in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was rather distractingly hammy in spots? I know he was supposed to be devastated and bereaved throughout much of the picture, but his expressions of grief seemed more like he was on the verge of a heart attack most of the time. In his physical mannerisms, he seemed more like he was trying to emulate Peter Finch in Network within a supposedly more down-to-earth character. I got used to it after a while, but at times it threw me out of the movie, especially surrounded by the more modulated turns by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke and the rest.

A tie between Peter Finch and Ned Beatty in "Network." They don't merely chew the scenery, they hack it with a pick ax. And it works. I think of the rage and frustration of 1976...after the fall of Nixon, the collapse of the sixties ideal, the war, the lies...you can't blame them for screaming every other word.

I don't find De Niro over the top in Once Upon a Time in Amercia myself but I can see him being over the top in Cape Fear.

De Niro's a great actor but the one thing I think De Niro has a hard time with is natural conversational dialogue. When he's playing lonely/creepy as in Taxi Driver or angry loner as in Raging Bull or geeky nerdy as in King of Comedy he's great but when he just has to play a normal character like in Falling in Love he seems unbearably stilted. Some actors just can't do "normal" and I think De Niro's one of them.

But "crazy" - damn can he do "crazy." And, for me at least, his Cape Fear is one hilariously over the top performance that's a hoot to watch.

Big Acting is one of the necessary ingredients in camp, whether good (Female Trouble) or so-bad-it's-wonderful (Reefer Madness). It's also more acceptable in part because camp embraces artifice and drama: no one debates whether Divine should have taken a more subtle approach to her characters, after all.

In honor of your review of Romero's latest, I'd mention Lincoln Maazel's over-the-top Tada Cuda in Romero's Martin as one of my favorites. He barrels through the otherwise muted film like a firecracker, but that's part of Romero's point: Cuda is an old Romantic in a world not made for old Romantics. That everyone else is low-key and relatively naturalistic only makes his scenery-chewing stand out even more. I love it!

Among the worst, I'd include Damon Wayans' starring role in Bamboozled: he affects an accent unlike anything I've heard a real human being speaking (something like Robby the Robot with a speech impediment), then twitches his way through the film. Like these other examples it draws a lot of attention to itself as an outsized performance, but here it's like nails on a blackboard.

Albert Finney has been mentioned, but not for "The Dresser"--perfectly appropriate over-the-top. A less serious movie that had both a great and an awful OTT was "The Third Element". Gary Oldman, totally bizarre and great--Chris Tucker, as annoying as any character ever. A very different kind of great hammy performance was Peter Lorre in "The Maltese Falcon". Not so different from any of his others, maybe, but in a great film. I could smell the sweat and gardenias. And another bad one from a usually reliable actor was Ed Harris in "The Hours". He was trying to overpower the cranked up Philip Glass score, I guess. On the actress side I'll go with Kathy Bates in "Misery", great, and Amanda Plummer (and Robin Williams) in "The Fisher King", much much less so.

Tony Montana. Period.

As far as nails-on-the-chalkboard performances go, Sandy Dennis in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" is the absolute, excruciating worst. Talk about cringe-inducing, obnoxiously intolerable performances. And she won an OSCAR for it too! Geeze... awful, awful, awful.

I'm an absolute sucker for over-the-top performances -- not in the sense that I believe "bigger = better" like the academy does, but in the sense that I'm not afraid to enjoy a "big" performance.

One of my favorites was my man Daniel Day Lewis as Bill the Butcher. Geez, I idolized that character for so long. "What is this? The Pope's new ah-mee?"

And I can't believe that I forgot about Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. You want over-the-top? Have Ben Kingsley yelling "YES!" about 50 times in a row and peeing on carpets. I love it.

Excruciating? I'd say pretty much everybody in American History X with the possible exception of Ed Norton (his performances balances some of the film's painfully amateurish mistakes, be at times he succumbs to it all as well).

Benecio del Toro in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Love the book, like the actor, but boy did I start to dread his appearances in this movie. I think Gilliam already pushed things too far into Gilliam-land with the filmmaking (the book itself, despite telling a crazy story, is very controlled and precise) and del Toro's performance was the extra off-putting element the movie didn't need. Want to hear the character done right? Check out Maury Chaykin on the excellent audio book version of "Fear and Loathing." (Which also stars Jim Jarmusch and Harry Dean Stanton, both as Thompson.)

Dane: THANK YOU for mentioning Ed Harris in "The Hours."

One of the most desperate "give me an Oscar [nomination]" performances I've ever seen. But I agree - he's generally reliable.

I also can't believe nobody's mentioned Sean Penn from "I Am Sam." I'm one of the people who thought his over-intensity worked well for most of "Mystic River" (with the exception of the "Is that my daughter in there?" scene), but "I Am Sam" was an embarrassment.

Just to show that hammy is in the eye of the beholder, Del Toro's overwrought performance in "Fear and Loathing" is one of the first ones I thought of as one my all-time favorites. The examples of great over-acting in Kubrick's films are simply too numerous to mention. OK, I'll mention R. Lee Ermey anyway. He is truly the most grabastic piece of amphibian shit to ever grace the silver scene.

I love Orson Welles' nonstop scenery chewing in "Chimes at Midnight." David Huddleston should have bloviated his way to an Oscar in "The Big Lebowski," and George Kennedy tears it up in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" - "Drop your cocks and grab your socks!"

Ed Harris in A History of Violence. I wrote in a review that he doesn't chew the scenery, he swallows it whole.

Also, Tommy Wiseau in The Room. Unbeatable. "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART!!" indeed.

Rod Steiger did good over-the-top (In the Heat of the Night) and bad over-the-top ( in The Amityville Horror, a good example of the type of horror movie performance that isn't scary or haunting, but just depressing).

What Kubrick said about acting was: It may be real, but is it interesting? He said thhis about the art direction in The Shining:

We wanted the hotel to look authentic rather than like a traditionally spooky movie hotel. The hotel's labyrinthine layout and huge rooms, I believed, would alone provide an eerie enough atmosphere. This realistic approach was also followed in the lighting, and in every aspect of the decor it seemed to me that the perfect guide for this approach could be found in Kafka's writing style. His stories are fantastic and allegorical, but his writing is simple and straightforward, almost journalistic.

That seems to me partly why Nicholson's performance works so well in the clip above. Kubrick just sets the camera down and lets him go through Torrance's shifting thoughts and moods, with his voice reverberating in that empty room, so it becomes clear by the end that he's talking to himself in the mirror.

One bit of overacting that works in a Gilliam movie: widow Sheila Reid in BRAZIL, moaning as she asks our "hero" Sam Lowry "What have you done with his body?" For those few moments, BRAZIL leaves the arena of dark comedy and becomes something much darker, thanks purely to Reid's performance. Reportedly, the studio thought it was too dark. Of course they did.

I'll also add both Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men." To be fair, I think they were compensating for a half-baked script that was surprisingly empty dramatically, and wrong-headed direction on Rob Reiner's part. (The melodramatic close-ups are giggle-inducing throughout.)
But seriously, every scene where Cruise gets "angry" (plus that horrible "drunk" scene) is laughable, as is Nicholson's needless grimacing and one-note angry sneer during the supposedly legendary courtroom scene.

It's actually a consistently awful movie. Oscar noms notwithstanding.

Al Pacino, Ed Harris, and Jack Lemmon are all mesmerizing in their mad desperation in "Glengarry Glen Ross" not to mention the other characters who don't froth as much as those three.

Tommy Lee Jones in "Under Siege" bites holes through every other actor he is on screen with, but I loved every minute of it.

I actually LOVE both Del Toro and Depp in "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas."

Morgan Freeman is a *monster* in "Street Smart."

Nicholson is magnetic in "The Shining" and Shelley Duvall's performance is crucial to the film's success. Danny Lloyd is also excellent, though it isn't "over-the-top."

Gary Oldman in "The Professional"!!!!

David Lynch villains: Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth, Robert Blake as "The Mystery Man," Willem Dafoe as Bobby Peru, and the criminally underrated Ray Wise as Leland Palmer. "Wash your hands!"

Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.

And Kudos to Schuyler for mentioning David Thewlis in my favorite performance in my favorite Mike Leigh film. I don't think I'd consider that over the top. Brenda Blethyn in "Secrets & Lies" maybe, what with all her screeching and blubbering.

Of course her screeching and blubbering right next to the placid, unfazed Marianne Jean-Baptiste is one of the funniest images in the history of cinema.

R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D'Onofrio in...you know...

Um, "Sexy Beast" has been covered. Ray Winstone's Ray from "Nil By Mouth" is even more insane than Kingsley's Don Logan.

And Kudos to Schuyler for mentioning David Thewlis in my favorite performance in my favorite Mike Leigh film. I don't think I'd consider that over the top. Brenda Blethyn in "Secrets & Lies" maybe, what with all her screeching and blubbering.

Of course her screeching and blubbering right next to the placid, unfazed Marianne Jean-Baptiste is one of the funniest images in the history of cinema.

R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D'Onofrio in...you know...

Um, "Sexy Beast" has been covered. Ray Winstone's Ray from "Nil By Mouth" is even more insane than Kingsley's Don Logan.

Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho Tep was pretty insane, but then again he had to play the role that way.

Let's not forget Nic Cage in "Moonstruck:"
I lost my hand! I lost my bride!" Wonderful stuff, esp. given the deadpan line readings given earlier in the film (Olympia Dukasis' "Who's dead?" still cracks me up).

Watching Raul Julia in "Street Fighter," I can't help but see how much fun he was having with the role. It's certainly a terrible movie, but I feel no embarrassment that it's his last film; he certainly seems to be enjoying himself.

John Barrymore in Twentieth Century.

How about Robert Shaw in "Jaws." Litterally nail-on-a-chalkboard, but in a great way. He really make the movie authentic, and really gets his character.

John Voight in Anaconda. His performance makes the snake even more wonderfully rubbery.

And on another note, Edie Beal in the great Grey Gardens. Of course it was a documentary, but c'mon, she was totally on stage.

Arran is right about Ed Harris in "A History of Violence." But while we're there, let's not forget William Hurt in the same film. Or William Hurt in about anything. Ugh.

And in "There Will Be Blood" Paul Dano (who I've otherwise liked) made me cringe, but I thought Daniel Day-Lewis worked, even when drinking Eli Sunday's milkshake (not so sure about the napkin on the face scene).

From here it's a small leap into the conversation about stunt acting and when the movie wants it or needs it or fosters it (Scott in "Dr. Strangelove") and when a movie creates a character that the actor can't help but overplay (Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman" perhaps).

Good topic, Jim.

Will Pfeifer: I have been complaining about Benicio's Dr. Gonzo since the day the film came out. I'll sometimes trot out an old cassette tape of the audioversion to prove my point, to which my film-obsessed sparring partner will invariably respond that Chaykin's dead-brilliant reading is what's over-the-top! Inconceivable. It's a comfort to know that someone else in the world agrees with me.

Arran, I actually don't remember Harris's performance in Violence that well (except for the scar) but you did remind me of the really good prosciutto of William Hurt in the same flick.

Oh man, just your line "I find George C. Scott's broad clowning as General Buck Turgidson in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove laugh-out-loud hilarious" made me think of the performance and laugh out loud. And I'm not talking about one of those cheesy fake Internet out loud laughs. I literally chuckled at the memory of a chastened Buck Turgidson shoving another stick of gum in his mouth.

For the sake of originality, I'll have to add the entire cast of Raising Arizona to the list of delightful over-the-top performances.

Why Tim the Enchanter in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, of course. "Look at the bones!"

Two things: 1) Every time I load this page I momentarily think that's Walter Matthau in the pic and then realize it's Daniel Day Lewis.

2) Matthau played his roles in a broad almost vaudeville style and it never bothered me once. I think whether it bothers you or not has a lot to do with how you feel about the actor personally. I liked Matthau so it never bothered me but if you don't like the actor (as Jim doesn't with DDL) I can see how every inflection would make you hate them more.

I bit my tongue earlier, and didn't want to be first to post.
I thought I'd be pelted with "rotten lotuses" to besmirch DeNiro.
From young Vito Corleone, to a swishy sky-pirate? More Fearless Leader please-- where the ham is appropriate.

Jason: Just wanted a quick clarification on William Hurt.

First of all, I hated him in "A History of Violence" - in fact, I didn't like the film at all (for more reasons than I can reasonably fit into a post). But I guess I don't quite see what you mean when you say that Hurt qualifies as over-the-top in "just about anything." I mean...generally speaking, he's low-key, monotone, even boring. Many would say he's a flat, unemotional actor most of the time. The opposite of over-the-top - for better or worse, that's up for debate. Naturally, I haven't seen every single movie he's ever done; do you have any examples that might show me otherwise? For instance, I haven't seen "Altered States" or "The Kiss of the Spider Woman." Perhaps that's what I'm missing.

Maybe somebody has already mentioned this, but I'd nominate Al Pacino in "Dick Tracy" and Al Pacino in "Heat." The first one has comic intentions, the second one is unintentionally comic: "GIMME ALL YOU GOT!" Did I mention that I love both performances?

Immediately coming to my mind is a particular performance that is simultaneously "large" (as in unusual rather than loud) and quietly effective: Billy Bob Thornton in "Sling Blade." His performance was turned into a joke and a caricature by others who imitated his performance, but the movie itself was quietly disturbing and subtly effective. The jokes on Thornton's intimate creation are probably an attempt by people to express their cultural and social uneasiness toward mental illness and child abuse. The movie was very underestimated, much simplified when it came out.

The ham-favoring bias in Oscar acting awards is a long-running tradition. Just look at the "representative clips" for each nomination at the award ceremony -- they are predominantly a scene of screaming, shouting, emoting, and crying. It grabs people's attention.

I can't think of many examples of "large" performances that deeply affected me, but can think of many that made me cringe. Perhaps that's because my nature favors quiet and subtle performances that I RECOGNIZE in life rather than ones that are alien to me.

There is a lot in There Will Be Blood that I admire, including the lack of a dramatic plot that tie the movie together. But I have to wonder whether the movie would be a lot more effective and profound if it were able to maintain its stoic, distant gaze upon the characters as it does in the first half hour.

Immediately coming to my mind is a particular performance that is simultaneously "large" (as in unusual rather than loud) and quietly effective: Billy Bob Thornton in "Sling Blade." His performance was turned into a joke and a caricature by others who imitated his performance, but the movie itself was quietly disturbing and subtly effective. The jokes on Thornton's intimate creation are probably an attempt by people to express their cultural and social uneasiness toward mental illness and child abuse. The movie was very underestimated, much simplified when it came out.

The ham-favoring bias in Oscar acting awards is a long-running tradition. Just look at the "representative clips" for each nomination at the award ceremony -- they are predominantly a scene of screaming, shouting, emoting, and crying. It grabs people's attention.

I can't think of many examples of "large" performances that deeply affected me, but can think of many that made me cringe. Perhaps that's because my nature favors quiet and subtle performances that I RECOGNIZE in life rather than ones that are alien to me.

There is a lot in There Will Be Blood that I admire, including the lack of a dramatic plot that tie the movie together. But I have to wonder whether the movie would be a lot more effective and profound if it were able to maintain its stoic, distant gaze upon the characters as it does in the first half hour.

For bad over the top performances I'd have to go with Al Pacino in pretty much anything starring Al Pacino. I've always dreamed of seeing a trailer for some Pacino film cut to a title card that reads " 'PACINO GOES APE SH*T!' - Critic X"

Good over the top would have to go to Kurt Russell in "Big Trouble in Little China." Reading dialog like "Ok, you people! Sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we're not back by dawn... call the president." in a bad John Wayne impersonation is brilliant.

Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 2 was one of the most hilarious over-the-top performances, in an extremely over-the-top film.
Thank-you for mentioning Annette Bening's performance in American Beauty - it almost ruined the film for me. Likewise Tim Robbins in War of the Worlds and Mystic River. He seems to think making bug-eyes equals intensity, when normally he's so understated in other films. Sean Penn, well he's just got his intensity level up to 11 in all his roles. He made Kevin Bacon's performance in Mystic River the best, most underrated performance of that year. Just watch Bacon alongside all the other characters, and suddenly everyone is a ham. Oops, that sounded like a bad pun.
I think putting subtle actors beside hammy performances is what bothers me most. I think Jack Nicholson in The Departed went too far in his performance. It was like he was in his own little movie, trying to show how "crazy" he was.
As for good old Jack in the Shining - that performance is not only hammy, it's over-rehearsed to the point of robotic, and completely silly. I can almost hear Kubrick off to the side saying "Okay, turn your head, now your eyes, then smirk, say the line, wait a beat, inhale..." etc.

Well, Jim.

You beat me to the punch.

Was just sitting down to finish a blog of my own in which I go to lengths to compare TWBB to The Shining and a couple other films.

To me The Shining seems to be the grandfather of TWBB - a direct descendant. When Anderson calls his creation a horror film, he himself is admitting the connection, which goes well beyond the "over-the-top" performance. In several instances music from the same composer is used.

But that's not what this post is exactly about. To me if an over-the-top performance fits the tone of the movie then it's hardly over the top. In fact, it's quite fitting. From Jack Torrance to Plainview, the over the top quality of the performance isn't what gives or takes away the pictures life, it's how the director uses it that either uplifts or kills the film.

How about every role Thandie Newton has ever played? (Both good and bad.) Always like nails on a chalkboard to me.

The 2 that come to my mine: Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate and Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire

What's being defined as overacting here? Is it just any moment in a performance that's particularly demonstrative? Is that overacting, and just doing what the scene calls for? Does any overt emotional display by an actor constitute overacting?

Carping aside, here's my take:
Good ham: Vincent Price in almost everything he was in.(Obvious perhaps, but in a discussion of great overacting, I'm shocked his named hasn't popped up yet.) Ditto Charles Laughton.
Bad ham: Spencer Tracy in virtually everything he made after Fury (1936).

JE: Paul, those are exactly the questions I posed in my post -- and want people to think about when commenting. You may think it's appropriate or inappropriate in a given context, but what is it that makes it work for you -- or not? I was waiting for somebody to mention Price and Laughton, too.

My favorite over-the-top acting ever: Jack Nicholson in "The Departed".

"Don't laugh! This ain't reality TV!"

George Clooney in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" The movie needed a calm at the center of the storm. He should be our guide through the freaks he encounters, but he's so over the top that everyone else seems normal. It's totally the directors fault.

This might be an unpopular assertion, but Joe Pesci overacts his head off in Goodfellas. It's perfect for the role and the film, but so out there that it's about as easily mocked and imitated as anything in cinema.

I never realized the pic was DDL and not Matthau until Jonathan said so.

If there's a level of truth in the performance, and when I say truth, I mean emotional truth, then as far as I'm concerned the actor can be as over the top as he wants.

An actor of recent years that wears his emotions on his shoulders, sometimes to enjoyable effect and other times to poor effect is Ryan Reynolds.

His role in "Smokin' Aces" isn't the greatest role, but he's so very extroverted and his emotional turmoil so honest that it doesn't hurt that the dial is turned up performance wise. Then you see him in a comedy and he'll play it big at the expense of the emotion - usually to get a laugh. Sometimes these moments can pop out at the most awkward times in an otherwise decent performance.

Another actor I find that swings back and forth is Nathan Lane. In "The Birdcage" there's an emotional truth that keeps whatever shenanigans he gets himself into grounded. The bigger the better in this movie. Then you see the movie musical version of "The Producers" and cringe because the mugging has no emotional relevance. It's just mugging, and mugging for the back row of a theater none-the-less. Not only is the tone of the film off, but the performances are so miscalculated for the camera that it's not funny. That's over the top in a bad way.

Let's look at another Mel Brooks' movie, "Young Frankenstein". It's littered with over the top performances, some of the most brilliant over the top performances I've ever seen. Because even though they're so exaggerated you believe that they're being affected by what they're dealing with.

Now in "TWBB" is there an emotional truth being explored in the final scene? Is there something keeping the performance grounded? It's hard to say. The scene just before the last scene in which the son and father confront each other is such a contrived and doctored moment that emotional truth flew out the door for me. It because more about what the director was trying to do, rather than what this character had naturally become. It left truth behind for "meaning". Two very different things in my opinion. So there's a lot of meaning in the final scene, and some truth perhaps as well. It would be interesting to see how that final scene played out without the disruptive scene between father and son. Never know now...never know.

One of the worst performances in recent years is Renee Zellweger in "Cold Mountain". It is in my opinion, one of, if not THE worst performances to win an Oscar.

Mads: Completely agree with you on Zellweger. It's not really that it was all that over-the-top - it's just that anyone in the world can put on a really broad Southern accent and say all the script's "cute" lines. It's the easiest performance in the world and she brought no nuance whatsoever to the role.

(Can you believe Zellweger is a three-time Golden Globe winner? Seriously? And I don't think she's opened her eyes for a single one of those performances.)

Chris: You're right, I kind of drifted from the point. Hurt is over the top in "Violence," but he merely stinks in "just about anything."

Still, when I was writing that, I was thinking about Hurt's performance in "The Village" -- though I admit I'm a bit conflicted on that performance -- and recently in "Mr. Brooks." Those turns weren't as over the top as in "Violence," just lame. So I drifted off topic.

Back on topic: Mads -- Zellweger in "Cold Mountain." I'm happy to call that the worst performance to win an Oscar! Can't believe I didn't think of it. Awful.

Wow, reading over the comments I see my top picks for the most part already mentioned. George C. Scott as Patton. The performance works beautifully because Patton, himself, was a caricature to begin with. As a secondary pick in this vein, Cate Blanchet as Katharine Hepburn (the Aviator) hits the same notes (although not as brilliantly as Scott's Patton.)

People have mentioned A History of Violence, and I agree that Harris and Hurt go far with their roles (to this day I'm still on the fence about how I feel whether it works or not.) However, I found the performances in eXistanZ more striking. The first time I watched eXistanZ I cringed. Although, whenever I watch a Cronenberg film at the end credits I'm usually left with the feeling of "What the hell was that?!" And I don't mean that in a bad way. Cronenberg always leaves me feeling like I have to watch the movie again to grasp it and give it a fair judgment (and he's the only director who does that consistently.) I think what it is is that somehow I always expect some degree of "normalcy" in a Cronenberg film no matter how many werid and inexplicable tales I've sat through.

(Warning: Spoilers for eXistanZ below.)

When I watched eXistanZ for a second time I was delighted. It is over the top, and it is cringe-worthy over the top ... but here's what I find interesting: eXistanZ is dead on accurate when it comes to the ridiculous plotting and outright silly characterizations within the realm of video-game RPGs, and watching the film having played games such as XenoSaga and Final Fantasy 8, the whole movie comes across as a playful ribbing of the cringe-worthy elements in the younger medium. Where Evil Dead goes after horror movie camp and somehow elevates it to something fun (dare I say "more sophisticated") to watch, eXistanZ does the same for SquareSoft games. And hey, almost all of the film takes place within a video game, so all of the over-the-top aspects are appropriate.

(end Spoilers.)

oh, and no one's mentioned Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner ... ? There's many elements surrounding the replicants that would violate my suspension of disbelief in just about any other movie (like Pris's method of fighting Deckard, for example.) The film keeps me engaged because it presents its world so artistically wonderful, and even the most outrageous moments somehow feel appropriate to that strange futuristic film noir-ish world. Rutger Hauer's performance in the final scenes betrays the sensibilities of our world and this world's logistics, but it does fit into a world of Replicants where attack ships burn off the shoulder of Orion.

I don't know the exact set of circumstances that allows an actor to get away with an over-the-top performance, but I think everyone will agree that the rest of the film plays a major role as well. Juxtaposition is of great importance (perhaps greater) than the acting itself, which goes back to your earlier post, Jim, about the director & editor's influence on an actor's performance. The performance has to feel natural to the world in which it belongs.

A definition of overacting as partially derived from the selections people are making here (some of which would never occur to me as instances of overacting) would seem to involve performances that are highly physical - performances approached as dance. To cite one example, George C. Scott's performance as Patton is interesting partly because he plays him almost like a dandy - besides the affected, self-conscious gait he adopts, he's constantly moving into these dyanamic akimbo positions, and putting his hand to his forehead in prima donna fashion. It's all highly choreographed.

I tend to connect people's sense of embarrassment over highly expressive performances to the semi-common modern embarrassment over the musical. For me, the difference between good and bad overacting boils down to a couple of things: is the "dance" graceful and is it inventive? I don't like Jeremy Davies' performances of the last few years not because he's overacting and extravagant, but because they're ugly performances - full of nervous tics and affectations that just look bad. Realism barely enters into it - it's just a matter of him making it impossible for the audience to find any pleasure in his movements. My dislike of Tracy's later performances comes from a sense that he's got a particular way of moving from one end of the frame to another that he never varies - he makes the same moves in every scene of every movie from his MGM period onwards.

Pacino's a fascinating case because he started out as one of the great anti-expressive actors - watch him in The Godfather, and one's struck by how he stands apart because he's so still. He and Duvall seem to be holding a contest to see who can do the best impersonation of lawn furniture. But it provides a nice balance to Brando - he shows how a man of girth can impersonate a great ballet dance, or James Caan, who shows how a midwestern white boy can deliver an actorly version of a James Brown shuffle. To see Pacino in virtually every performance since then (and certainly since Scarface) is to see an actor who at some point discovered he greatly enjoyed moving his body - perhaps a little too much.

Christian Bale in "American Psycho." I still don't know if he actually killed anyone or the whole thing was an insane delusion, and his crazy performance was a big part of that.

Most of this discussion is invariably prejudiced by personal experience and psychology, and our various insufficiencies in relating to certain people.

Anyways, I think it's important to note PTA's use of over-acting in ALL of his movies: DDL/TWBB, Sandler in P-DL, Moore in Magnolia, (Everyone?) in Boogie Nights, Paltrow in Sydney. It's disingenuous to expect anything else from his movies; hating these performances is (to quote a funny source) like criticizing Ozu for shooting low angles.

On that note, what in the world was that napkin doing on his head!?

A brief history of over the top performances/performers I can't stomach:

- Peter Sellers in "Dr. Strangelove" AS Dr. Strangelove. I know it's a sacred cow, but it always makes me cringe (and not in the intended way).
- Al Pacino from the moment he started shouting "Attica!" until the present day.
- Nicolas Cage, everything.
- Jack Nicolson, everything since "Reds" (save "About Schmidt").

My favorite OTTP has to be Jon Polito as Johnny Caspar in "Miller's Crossing". I will never tire of hearing him say, "Always put one in the brain!"

What, no Kirk Douglas? Especially Ace In The Hole...

And speaking of Kirk Douglas movies, I would argue Charles Laughton wasn't being that over the top in Spartacus -- except when Crassus leaves the Senate and he delivers the line that's my favorite part of the film: "I'll take a little republican corruption, along with a little republican freedom, but I WON'T TAKE... the dictatorship of Crassus... and NO FREEDOM AT ALL!!!""

Silence of the Lambs must be turning into a lost classic since it appears that nobody bothered to mention Anthony Hopkins' memorable "fava beans" line.

I think everyone knows that Cox represented the Hannibal Lecter character far better than Hopkins, but Hopkins wins by a landslide in terms of sheer animal magnetism.

By the way:

Don Logan (Sexy Beast) is one of the best over-the-top characters ever, even with the near-stunt casting of Ghandi to play the role.

That reminds me:

Best stunt-casting ever - Henry Fonda as the villain (who shoots a kid!) in "Once Upon a Time in the West".

One more thought:

Has anyone else tired of Joe Pesci's "Do you think I'm a clown" routine from Goodfellas? Great film, but that dialogue has long been inducted into the pantheon of cliched lines.

Well, I'm the odd duck who actually loves Annette Benning in American Beauty. For me, she's one of the things that works perfectly in that film. There are a few places where the film goes wrong and in my estimation the flaws can be found where the film takes itself too seriously. I think American Beauty works best if viewed as similar to Heathers. I just wish it was a bit more consistent in its tone and that the tone was a little less pretentious. I also think the film has dated poorly, largely due to having so many imitators. Still, the films works for me and Benning is the biggest reason why.

I love Gary Oldman. He seriously chews up the scenery in The Professional (Leon) but it totally works for me. Leon is presented as a superman and the film needs a supervillian.

The only film I can think of immediately where Gary Oldman's performance didn't work was The Contender. He stuck out like a sore thumb, but not in a good way. I think he takes huge risks and is truly a chameleon. It's the same for Daniel Day Lewis and I don't really agree with the notion that they are overacting (well, that they are ALWAYS overacting).

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon: Oldman is also absolutely perfect as Gordon in Batman Begins, a film that has another great scene-chewing performance - Thom Wilkinson as Carmin Falcone.

I also think Ed Harris works well in A History of Violence. His overplayed-gangster character really helps to emphasize the complacency of the Thom Stall character. It's also a fantastic counterpart to Maria Bello. I think she plays her part with amazing precision - she's the most realistic character in the entire film (not that the others should be realistic) and the one who is constantly having to react to situations that are completely out of whack with what she (and by extension, what the audience) perceives as normal. Her reactions are frayed, aggressive, scared, and protective all at once. Any normal person would be taken aback by her aggressiveness but it takes a character like Ed Harris played in Carl Fogerty to really prop up a brick wall for her to keep slamming into. He completely dumfounds her. I don't think Maria Bello could have given such a perfect performance without having Ed Harris on the other side of it.

Tom Cruise in Magnolia and Jerry Maguire. Perfectly cast actor for both roles. The "Thom Cruise intensity" is perfectly suited here.

I hate Vince Vaughn. He makes me angry. Though I don't know that he's overacting so much as he's just plain obnoxious.

Jonny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. There are two reasons why Pirates of the Carribean works - Johnny Depp's iconic, cartoonish character (which helps save the film from Orlando Bloom) and Gore Verbinski's talents as a director that took mediocre material and turned it into a well-crafted adventure flick. I was so engrossed during the film that I completely missed the fact that it doesn't really add up.

Val Kilmer in Tombstone works for me too, as does Powers Boothe. Hell, the whole film is hammy as hell and I love it for what it is.

How about Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai? Love that performance. It gives comic relief and helps illustrate the hyprococy of the of the supposidly high-class, moral samurai. It also makes it clear that he really is a man who doesn't belong to any of the groups represented in the film.

How about Mifune in Rashomon? Or even Hidden Fortress. I don't think Minue is all that much different from a Daniel Day Lewis. Is Mifune overacting? Is he cringe-worthy? Obviously, I don't think so - I love the guy and can't picture his films being so beloved with anyone else in his roles.

Wiley Wiggins drives me crazy in Dazed and Confused. It's one of my absolute favorite films and Wiley Wiggins makes me cringe constantly throughout the film. Every time he grabs the bridge of his nose I go crazy.

I also have to say that I don't care for Jimmy Stewart. So shoot me. The only reason I put up with him is because he happens to be in a few Hitchock films that I love. I'll give him his due - he's fantastic in Vertigo. Other than that, he's just Jimmy Stewart trying to prove that he's "acting."

Long post. I'll shut up now...

Timothy Carey, esp. in Kubrick (Paths of Glory, The Killing) and Cassavetes (Minnie & Moskowitz, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie).
Insane brilliance.

Philip Kelly: I haven't seen Smokin' Aces, but Ryan Reynolds has gotten on my nerves every time I've seen him on-screen. Waaayyyy too much mugging. Like you said, Reynolds always seems to be grabbing desperately for a laugh. I guess that in itself makes some people laugh. Not me.

Speaking of ham and Jack (hey! that would be a great lunch item for Planet Hollywood), I'm surprised nobody's mentioned his Joker in the '89 Batman. Great example of a role that doesn't fit the movie it's in. Everything about his Joker reminds me of the Adam West TV show, but the rest of the film is more in line with the darker, gritter version of Batman seen in Frank Miller's work and Batman Begins.

Phil:

The napkin was on his head so his deaf son couldn't read his lips. It was meant as a direct conversation between him and his competitor at the other table; the napkin took his son completely out of the moment.

Disagree with the Joe Pesci comment. At the time he made it it was not a cliche. It may be now to you but at the time it was just what the role needed.

How does Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon movies stack up in overacting? How about comparing Nathan Lane in The Producers to Zero Mostel in the original The Producers? Mitchum vs de Niro in Cape Fear? Roy Scheider in All That Jazz?

To haggie, I always defend everyone's taste about anything so I'll simply say that in well over two score years on this planet I have never heard anyone say they didn't like Jimmy Stewart. Sure, maybe a particular role, but never overall. Still, I hope no one shoots you. Really.

Recent cringe-inducing performance: Michael Gambon as Professor Dumbledore in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

In the theater, there was something I didn't like about the film but I couldn't quite place it. Watching the DVD, I figured it out. The late Richard Harris set the right tone in the first two films; he felt like the character that novelist J.K. Rowling had created. Gambon did alright in the third film, "Prisoner of Azkaban," but he changed the character this time, or someone did it for him. In "Goblet of Fire," he comes across as more of a wild-eyed madman than the unflappable, introspective professor.

He did tone it down in the fifth film, "Order of the Phoenix," but that may be due to the fact that he, like most of the other adults in the Potter series, gets short-shifted on screen time in favor of the kids. I understand why that happens - they've got to condense 800-page tomes down to a respectable 2-1/2 hour movie.

Craig: I loved Jeffrey Wright in the otherwise deadly dull "Shaft" remake, too. He was the only thing that kept me watching -- and the only real fun in the movie.

Chris B.: That is indeed the pretext for the "napkin scene" in TWBB. (And it's another bit that wasn't in the shooting script, so they must have come up with it during production at some point.) What I wondered was: Why would Plainview care if H.W. understood what he was saying to the Standard Oil folks at the other table? When he approaches them, he points back at H.W., so clearly the boy understands he's being spoken about. What could Plainview say that H.W. doesn't already know?

Maybe it's supposed to be another "milkshake" moment, too -- a bit of absurdity in the Tragicomedy of a Ridiculous Man....

I interpreted the napkin scene as Plainview's irritation that he's considered invisible with the Standard Oil bigshots around. Right before he does this, he growls at the bartender for taking the Standard guys' orders before giving Plainview and his son their drinks.

Of course, on another level, it's another of Day-Lewis's placemarkers, charting Plainview's spiral into madness.

I was about to post that no one mentioned Mifune yet, but Haggie beat me to it. Wonderful performance that transcends subtitles.

Just a thought: Do animated performances by vocal talents apply in this discussion? I have no doubt that countless actors have taken inspiration from Mel Blanc's Daffy.

One I'm surprised nobody's mentioned is Stephen Stucker's performance as Johnny in Airplane!. He was the only person in the movie saying his lines like he knew they were funny, which to my mind made them much less so. By the time he was holding two phones, spinning around, and yelling, "Auntie Em! It's a twister!", I couldn't wait until I never had to see him again. At least, not until the next time I watched the movie...

William Hurt gives perhaps the second best performance in "A History of Violence" after Viggo Mortensen.

We've been waiting the whole film for Tom/Joey to confront the hidden black core of his benign shell. Hurt is a walking symbol of that, literally (they're blood) and figuratively.

I found Hurt to be quite restrained, and controlled, able to suggest evil and murder merely by his vulgar choice of vocabulary. One second, you could see the satisfaction on Richie's face twist into melancholy and then back again, eyes swarming with conflicted emotions. It's quite well-contained, actually.

In 2005, he was the go-to-guy for major characters with little screen time. In "Syriana" he played the mysterious (possibly ex-CIA?) counselor of the already exceptionally well-informed CIA agent, Bob Barnes (Clooney). He is only in two scenes, but he's the character I was wondering about the most days later: Who was that guy? How did he know so much? Where did Barnes know him from?...Who was that guy?!!? Interesting to note that the second clandestine meeting between them takes place in the back of a movie theater.

Then he plays a significant role in "History" and he's only onscreen for, what, 10 minutes? The Richie Cusack scene is as crucial to the impact of "A History of Violence" as the single scene with Beatrice Straight is in "Network." And both parts are played beautifully.

When a director needs a quick burst of gravitas, they know who to go to.

William Hurt is one of the finest actors of his generation, rivaled only by Kevin Spacey in his effortless ability to radiate intelligence. I could see how this might irk certain resentful smart film watchers, as many people will be damned before they have to claim deference.

Jim, Chris, Dan...

I loathe the final two scenes with the son in "There Will Be Blood". The scene with the napkin and the scene father the wedding.

Everyone wants to focus on the final scene (which is flawed but in an exceptional way) and skip over these two gratingly awkward scenes that really add nothing to the movie. In fact they contain leaps of logic. One second in the film the son could care less that he's with his dad the next he's begging him to understand why he has to go off on his own and that he loves him. This was the scene that lost me. It felt more like the creator of the film forcing the characters to do what he wanted them to do rather than letting them become their wily selves in the end.

I'm putting up a whole brass blog right now.

Phillip: The absurdity of the napkin scene was something I actually enjoyed (and Craig has an interesting take on it, above) because it was both tense and wacky. I just wish H.W. had started kicking and hitting Daniel again, as he had in the previous scene. That's what I wanted to do, anyway.

A friend of mine who saw the movie way in advance also said he thought a big chunk was missing around that jump to the wedding. And there is some additional stuff in the shooting script that's available from the official site about escalating tensions between the grown H.W. and his father, and H.W. conferring with Fletcher in private. The script also indicates five omitted scenes right before H.W. comes to visit Daniel. (I've been saying since I read the script -- something I rarely do, even after seeing the movie and NEVER before -- that if PTA does a Director's Cut" with enough of this stuff, it's going to be a radically different movie.) Russell Harvard, the actor who plays H.W. in the final confrontation scene in Plainview's office, said they shot more stuff with him that isn't in the movie.

I was struck by how the adult H.W. seemed to care for Daniel in the movie's penultimate scene... and also wondered what the hell was supposed to be going on between them. The whole scene just seemed to be a set up to get from Point A to Point "Baby in a Basket" to Point Milkshake.

Love your description: "It felt more like the creator of the film forcing the characters to do what he wanted them to do rather than letting them become their wily selves in the end."

That, of course, is one of my major problems with the movie: Almost everything about it feels narrow and predetermined to me. Anderson himself described it as a horror movie, telling EW: "What I mean by that is that we were going to tell a story that was only going to have a downward spiral." A few weeks ago I compared it to drillbit closing in on a single point. And I didn't mean that as a compliment.

I'm looking forward to reading more of what you have to say about it...

Klaus Kinski was hamming it up in every single role he ever played, be it in the campy Edgar Wallace films of the 60s or Werner Herzog's solemn (and sometimes equally, albeit unintentionally, campy) dramas of the 70s and early 80s, he was ALWAYS flat-out, full-bore, 180-miles-a-minute over the top. His famous readings of the poetry of Francois Villon are so ridiculously overenunciated it verges on parody, but the man was dead serious about it. He was a hit-or-miss guy: either his relentlessly hamming it up (and being German, I find his turn in "Aguirre" every bit as cringeworthy as his drooling and eye-rolling performance in "Cobra Verde" or his desperate attempt at comedy in Billy Wilder's dismal "Buddy Buddy") fits the movie, or it doesn't. Unfortunately, 95% of the time, it doesn't. (BTW, the German word for "ham", in the food sense, is Schinken.)

Thanks for mentioning "The Hours". Well, now, that's a film (one of the worst of the past ten years, if you ask me) chock-full with bad performances. Small wonder, though, as the script condems each and every actor to play a cliché: Ed Harris - the unrecognized literary genius with the 100-page-novel masterpiece in his desk drawer who's dying of AIDS; Meryl Streep (in what is probably the worst performance of her career, and yes, I've seen "A Cry in the Dark") - the overworked single mother/editor with a heart of gold going to extreme lengths for her job while neglecting her daughter; Julianne Moore - basically - and listlessly - rehashing her part as a depressed 50s hausfrau from the infinitely better "Far from Heaven"; and Nicole Kidman . . . well, some people actually think she's a great actress - I can only advise you to go see "Cold Mountain" (what are all these people doing in that piece of crap anyway?).

And, er, has anybody mentioned James Woods? ;)

PS: Johnny Depp is probably the only actor in this world who can make his underacting look like overacting (or is it the other way round?). I hate just about every single one of his performances - I simply don't buy any of it.

i'm surprised Andy Griffith as "Lonesome" Rhodes in Kazan's A Face In The Crowd has not been mentioned. what a wonderfully over-the-top turn for Andy! i mean it may get a little too much at times but i can't help but absolutely delight in the close-ups of his sweaty, maniacal face and that nasty evil laugh he gives! what a film before its time considering its take on media. along with Wilder's Ace In The Hole and Lumet's Network,(The Americanization of Emily?) it is one of the the great indictments of the "media-circus".

also someone mentioned Rod Steiger earlier. Sometimes he might have over acted. But sometimes you get the sense that he is just too good for the scripts he was given to work with. i mean he tried hard to give exuberance to what could be considered rather bland character parts. especially early in his career. things from the middle 50's like Jubal with Glenn Ford, or Back From Eternity with Robert Ryan and Anita Ekberg. Both of those films are slightly conventional narratives of the time with predictable characters and character traits. Yet Steiger always seemed to reach deep, and perhaps the acting came off kind of heavy but his were usually the characters you remembered even in those mediocre films. what a talent.

Brad brought up George Romero's films, and I've noticed that his films tend to have at least one hammy-but-good performance, almost like it's a trademark. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD has Judith O' Dea as Barbara going insane rather quickly ("You can't start the car, Johnny has the keys."), DAWN has Scott Reninger's very enthusiastic turn as Roger ("We whupped 'em and we got it ALL!"), DAY has Joe Pilato as Captain Rhodes ("CHOKE ON 'EM!"), and LAND OF THE DEAD had both John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper competing for the honor. (Can't figure out who I'd tag for this in DIARY just yet- maybe the professor.) Of course, the "Dead" movies are deliberately kind of comic book-y, so it fits.

Cronenberg's films tend to run the gamut more, I think; he can make use of very subtle performances and very broad ones depending on the needs of the story.

Grrr. I hate it when that happens: I just wrote a relatively concise (for me, anyway) comment about this hammy acting business, but then, I think, the Scanners Blog server went all milkshake, and my post went the way of the dodo. As ever, it was full of pithy insight, but you will just have to make do with this truncated version:

TWBB's ham is served mainly by two people: Daniel Day Lewis, sure, but Paul Dano as well. I hate that snivelling, restive, squirrel-like thing many a young actor has taken to. There's Dano in "TWBB," Casey Affleck in "Jesse James," Jeremy Davies and Giovanni Ribisi in, well, anything they've ever been in. Someone sould tell these guys: You fidget, you lose.

Also, is it me or doesn't TWBB, at times, feel like it was built around catchphrases? Or maybe it just feels that way because of the Prosciutto Grande. Just off the top of my head:

- The Milkshake line.
- "Bastard from a basket."
- I'm going to bury you underground, Eli.
- I'm your brother from another mother.
- GET OUT OF HERE, GHOST!
- I will bite you, Eli.
- Drainage.

etc.

Oh, I almost forgot:

"I am a false prophet, and god is a superstition."

I love to read your essays Jim. I do. And you're certainly entitled to your opinion.

I'll just let it be known that i think you should probably stick to the craft of filmmaking itself, and not bother with the nuances of acting. Usually I am in agreement with you on FILMS themselves, but I think you severly misjudge performances oftentimes.

I don't know if I am relieved or disappointed to hear that there were indeed scenes missing about HW and Daniel Plainview. The progression into adult HW and his relationship with his father is a jarring problem for me in the movie, because this tense and conflicted relationship is what I respond to the most.

I think it's a brilliant choice to make HW deaf and mute and use an interpretor to express his words for him. They love each other but they cannot express this love, especially the son. Two prominent themes in this relationship are the inability to speak and abandonment.

The fallout in their last scene together makes perfect sense to me as a "revenge" -- that the son is now abandoning his father like Cordelia in King Lear (or so the father perceives). The father regards this abandonment as utter betrayal and aims his words at the son's heart ("You're a bastard in a basket."), which is also typical of a parent's rage (again see Lear's banishment of Cordelia in Act I).

The use of an interpretor in this confrontation is a deliberate choice to restrain the emotional hyperbole that might have been required if both characters speak.

Gary Oldman has been mentioned for THE PROFESSIONAL -- which was awesome -- but my favorite OTT role of his was as Drexl the pimp in TRUE ROMANCE. All the characters in that movie were broadly painted and outlandish, but it worked spectacularly for me.

Bad OTT: every time Robin Williams tries to be funny.

Because I write about older movies, I am always wary of the "hammy" or "overacting" labels because I often find them applied to pre-1950 performances that don't warrant it. Acting has styles and fashions just like anything else, and just because something is no longer the latest rage doesn't make it bad. It can be just a question of what you are used to. That's why an art house can be an irritating experience if you are watching an old movie that was acted at a higher emotional pitch--the nervous titters have driven me close to homicide on more than one occasion.

Anyway, good over-the-top--how about some love for Burt Lancaster? Just the other day I was reading some scathing contemporary reviews of The Leopard(which admittedly had been butchered for the US release). What they saw as Virginia-smokehouse-on-rye, I saw as the very embodiment of an expiring way of life. And, because I am greedy, one more actor who is frequently accused of hamminess, John Barrymore. I just saw Beau Brummel on TCM a couple of weeks ago. That's an interesting performance, because there's a closing mad scene where Barrymore overdoes it, but the scenes before that, of Brummel's poverty and loneliness in Calais, could break your heart.

As for overacting, I will go out on a limb and say that John Malkovich often strikes me that way. All outward, twitchy indication, very little interior life. In Rounders, Con Air, In the Line of Fire -- it's like he learned to play villains by watching Boris Badenov.

"I just wish H.W. had started kicking and hitting Daniel again, as he had in the previous scene. That's what I wanted to do, anyway."

-Yes, I'm sure that would have made the scene much better. All snarkiness and jokery aside, why does every post concerning "There Will Be Blood" contain a snide quip from you? These little insults here and there seem to display something more than a film critic's displeasure. It seems like you have personal issues with either the film or Daniel Day-Lewis. You said in another post "when I see the look on his face -- which, to me, always seems smug and superior -- I want to smash his face in," and I'm obviously reminded of that when you say you wished H.W. had started hitting and kicking Daniel in that scene in the restaurant. Perhaps you would have enjoyed "There Will Be Blood" more if instead of the story of a turn-of-the-century oil prospector, it had been the story of Daniel Day-Lewis being repeatedly kicked in the balls.

When you say "Almost everything about it feels narrow and predetermined to me" I'm not quite sure how to interpret that. That's sort of a vague generalization.

Isn't Llewelyn Moss predetermined to die from the very moment he sneaks off with the suitcase sitting by the dead man under the tree? As soon as he grabs the suitcase, it cuts to a wide shot and we hear a portentous clap of thunder.

If you hadn't read the book first, would you have thought Moss was going to die? Doesn't it seem fairly certain that Chigurh cannot be stopped, not by Moss, not by Bell, not by anybody? Didn't it seem like Bell's weariness would eventually end in resignation?

Does your complaint mean you thought "TWBB" followed a predictable route? You wanted redemption for Plainview at the end?

Lee: Thanks for the kind words. But you've gotta give me more to go on than "I think you severly misjudge performances oftentimes." Examples, reasons?

Jun: I thought the use of George as interpreter was inspired, too. BTW, the actor who plays the grown-up H.W. is a deaf Gallaudet grad. The Lear comparison is exactly what I think Anderson was going for, but in the context of the movie it was so abrupt (and late) that it seemed gratuitous. Then again, perhaps that is indeed the point: Crazy Guy Goes Crazier.

Favourite full-blooded performances - those who do ham right - Peter O'Toole - takes "no prisoners!" with his great performance in Lawrence of Arabia (not to mention his Henry II in Beckett and the Lion in Winter (he should not have lost to the more anoemic Max Schell in Judgement at Nuremburg); Peter Fine - "i'm mad as hell" in NETWORK; Oliver Reed made great full blood procuitto in anything. Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry. At least there was life in the performances!

Ali - First off, I commented on the napkin scene a while ago and it still hasn't shown up so I think maybe the server is just slow due to the massive amount of commenting going on in these posts. Jim's hit upon some kind of Blogger's nirvana with his recent posts - I don't think I've ever seen so many comments here on so many consecutive posts.

Secondly, I think catchphrases are not written as such but emerge due to their popularity which in turn is a direct result of who's delivering them and how. And BIG acting tends to get lines noticed. And just to restate something I've said before and agree with Campaspe, I like BIG acting and do not consider it the same thing as bad ham acting. I am an actor and I have found too many actors are afraid to take things too far and in the end their performance suffers. There's nothing wrong with being understated but if that's where one starts out then then destination will almost always be torporsville.

I had a great acting teacher in college who taught us to start out going as over the top as we possibly could and then spend weeks refining the performance and bringing it in. Surprisely, when we'd watch ourselves on videotape after the initial over the top try, we never seemed as big as we thought we were being. So I definitely admire an actor who can successfully navigate that terrain and make it work. And even though I think I'm in the minority here, I think Day-Lewis does a splendid job in TWBB and most people don't appreciate how difficult what he did is. In fact, if I'm to be totally honest (and I really don't want to be because it takes a lot of the fun out of it) even the Oscar winners I would consider bad are not incompetent performances. They may not be to my liking but they're not inept. For instance, I understand everyones ire over Nicholson and Pacino losing out to Art Carney, and I agree - I think Nicholson should have won for Chinatown, but Carney's damn good in Harry and Tonto. He was a fine actor and had the misfortune to win against two classic performances that will be remembered through the ages.

Worst ham from and actor I like a lot - Michael Caine in ON DEADLY GROUND out porked bigger ham Segal.

Christian Bale (who I loved hamming it up in American Psycho) and his hip-hop performance in a bad movie who's name I have mercifully forgotten. Need help with the name.

Robert DeNiro in THE FAN

Harry Lime, I forgot to add that I appreciate your defense of Hurt in A History of Violence. I didn't find Hurt's performance restrained, as you say, but I did think he was wholly in control of what he was doing, and that what he was doing was completely in tune with the movie in terms of tone and theme. A lot of what worked for me with A History of Violence (and I liked it very much) was the way it deliberately played with your years of watching thrillers and built-up sense of how things work in the genre. Hurt's performance is of a piece with that.

Kudos to Campaspe.... I agree that the supremacy of "realism" can lead to misinterpretations of performances. Should we go through a roster of silent film actors and accuse them of overacting? I think we need to respect stylistic choices and allow ourselves and our films a willing suspension of disbelief.

I don't see how Robert De Niro was over the top in Once Upon a Time in America. His performance is incredibly restrained.

I would add the entire cast of "streetcar", including Brando (Stella!!); Anne Baxter in 10 Commandments; Sean Penn in Casualties of War; Billy Zane in Titanic where he only needed a moustache to wax; and Al Pacino in Scarface and Hoo-ah as the most grating performances in oscar winners; Favorite scene muching would be Alec Guiness in Star Wars; Rod Steiger in Heat of the Night and Jack Palances entire career.

Most interesting discussion, I think a lot of interesting ones have been mentioned, although I am lost as to why anyone's mentioning Rod Steiger in "In the Heat of the Night," if anything, I always got the sense that he's played the whole character holding back over-the-top tendencies that his character had. And, again, I think everybody in "American Beauty," played there parts well, if they were over the top, if was satirically so, and I think that gets lost a lot, it was a comedy remember.

Here's a few over-the-top I like:

Johnny Depp-"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"- I'm surprised this one hasn't come up, if he wasn't overacting, that film would've been boring as hell.

Ronee Blakely-"Nightmare on Elm Street"- Okay, that might have just been bad acting, but that's a former Oscar nominee acting like she's never been on camera before. (Granted, that nomination for "Nashville," was all wrong as well.)

Nicholas Cage-"Matchstick Men," Cage trying anything at his try-anything best. (I disagree with "Moonstruck," on Cage though, as an Italian, he hit the correct note for that character.)

Jack Nicholson- "One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest"- no real explanation needed.

Angelina Jolie-"Girl, Interrupted"- Girl McMurphy, who's actually crazy, and again made a bad movie bearable.

Speaking of OTT actors whose OTT-ness was encouraged by Kubrick, let's hear it for Shelley Winters, always over the top, often very effectively so (Lolita, Night of the Hunter, The Poseidon Adventure, Bloody Mama).

Giovani Ribisi (sp?) makes the hammiest list for every role he's in. Ditto Andrew McCarthy--did he ever understand how distracting wandering eye movement is on the big screen? Jeremy Davis made me cringe in "Solaris," although maybe it works better when you know the character's secret. Brad Pitt embarrassed himself in "Twelve Monkeys" but his role in "Seven Years in Tibet" was laugh-out-loud bad. His artless Austrian accent (it's more just a "German" accent) fades to midwestern twang when he gets overly emotive. Still, my most loathed, give-me-my-Oscar ham was Paccino (a god among actors) in "Scent of a Woman." Every "Hooyah!" made me want to punch him in the face. On the plus side, I love Paccino's line in "Heat" about Ashley Judd's rear end. ("She's got a great ass, and you got your head right up in it!" He even follows up by apologizing for getting so carried away.) Great big acting can be found in Viggo Mortensen's Aaragorn in "the Two Towers" when he kicks an orc helmet (while tracking the two Hobbits), falls to his knees and lets out a big barbaric yawp of frustration (fans of the LotR commentary will note that Viggo broke his toe in that shot). I liked DiCaprio yelling "I'm the king of the world" but when James Cameron said the same thing in his Oscar acceptance speech, I felt really bad for the man. Not mentioned yet, Ruth Gordon's Maude in "Harold and Maude" is some very broad and hammy acting that works flawlessly to warm and then break my heart.

I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the reighning monarch of over the top performances.....WILLIAM SHATNER! Subtle? hardly. Restrained? Never. Facinating in any role...good or bad... that he has ever played? Undeniable! In my opinion, low key, mumbling, realistic portrayals are best left to long dead, overrated icons...if I want realism I'll walk outside and get a faceful. Give me Shatner....or give me death! Well, maybe not death..perhaps an irritating skin rash.

My vote for at least an honorable mention in the Over the Top category goes to Christopher Walken as the opera-loving eccentric (putting it mildly) detective in Boondock Saints. But just about everything in that movie is over the top! And while I do think Walken's portrayal of the detective is so OTT as to distract our attention (we know he's playing a role, and thus are yanked out of the world of the film), I have to admit I find it amusing and funny nonetheless.

Howard Dean after coming in third at the Iowa primary. His performance was hilariously over-the-top.

Also, Kenneth Branagh's performance in his full-text version of Hamlet is both brimming with vitality and teetering on the edge of self-parody. I recently watched the movie for the first time, and will have to see it again to make up my mind completely, but it certainly kept me captivated.

Best Over the Top:

James Woods in The Specialist.

Steve Railsback in Helter Skelter.

Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue.

The Wife of Ken Ogata in The Demon.

Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant.

Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused.

Harry Lime: I think you're doing to me what you accuse me of doing to "TWBB." My two favorite scenes in the movie are between Daniel and H.W.: the conversation they have on the bluff at the Sunday Ranch about the pipeline, and H.W.'s reaction (again, not in the shooting script) when he's reunited with his father. Did you feel H.W.'s outburst (viewed from a physical and emotional distance -- beautiful touch!) was inappropriate? Others here have offered various interpretations of the napkin scene. How do you read it?

It's not necessarily a bad thing when you know exactly where a movie is headed from early in the film. But, as Phillip said in the comment I was responding to, I felt the plot was taking over to such an extent that it wasn't true to the characters. If you see it differently, by all means make your case. We like substantive back-and-forth discussions 'round here!

Great comments all around.

There are a lot of folks out there who only "go to 11", but for me the difference between tragicomedy and triumph comes in whether or not they can pick projects that work with their particular handicap. For instance:

George C. Scott or Peter Sellers were competely out of control all the time, but for the most part they stuck to projects fit their skill set.

Other people (like Nicholson or Joe Pesci) may have only one note, but they're marketing it as their exclusive trademark: They choose roles that always let them do what they do (even if we've seen them do it ad nauseum).

Guys like Will Ferrell or Mike Myers get a pass from me here - if you're going to one of their flicks, you know what you want and you'll be disappointed if you don't get it. (Or maybe even pleasantly surprised when they show something different, as Ferrell did in "Stranger Than Fiction")

Some guys like aformentioned lovebirds Robin Williams and Nathan Lane live or die according to this principle - sometimes they manage to line themselves up correctly, most other times, not so much.

I guess my main beef (or is that ham...) is reserved for folks who always go over the top even when (especially when...) the material clearly calls for layers. The worst offenders for me include:

Tom Cruise - He insists on trying to "show us his range" despite the fact that he clearly doesn't have any. I never see anything like a real live character in any role he plays - it's always just crazy 'ol Tom jumping up and down on the couch trying frantically (but unsucessfully) "for my consideration". It's all Cruise-shaped cardboard cut-outs: "Remember when Tom Cruise was wounded in Vietnam?" "Remember when Tom Cruise immigrated from Ireland in the mid-19th century?" "Remember when Tom Cruise couldn't handle the truth?" He's become one of the only actors I deliberately try to avoid.

Pacino - Second the earlier "post-Attica" comment: Al's been a raving, babbling disctraction in everything he's touched over the last 30 years. Tony Montana makes the Looney Tunes look like "Floating Weeds".

Rene Zellwiger - "Cold Mountain" was an abomination, but (lets be honest here...) not really a departure. She lost me at "Hello".

Cuba Gooding Jr - (Obviously, "Jerry McGuire" is my own personal hell.) How does this guy have an Oscar, and what does that teach us about Oscars?

Wasn't that Willem Defoe in "the Boondock Saints?" Why haven't Christopher Walken and Willem Defoe played brothers in a movie yet?

Ron Pitchford beat me to the punch. Shatner in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" is over the top and Beyond the Infinite, but damned if it doesn't work in that movie. I still remember people clapping when he did his immortal "KHAAAAN!!"

As for a nails in the chalkboard performance, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mickey Rooney's offensive, racist and idiotic performance as the Japanese landlord in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" a "classic" film I cannot stand to watch for more than 5 minutes. I have no idea what in the hell he or Blake Edwards were thinking. Maybe no one's mentioned Rooney's performance because they forgot about it. I wish I could.

Jim,

Plainview puts the napkin on his face for the reasons Craig already mentioned about the Standard Oil big-shots stealing his waiter's attention. As for H.W. striking his father, I'm not sure if I'd call it "appropriate" behavior, but it makes sense, and I especially admired Anderson's spare use of close-ups, rendering the few he does have that much more effective. Consider the extreme close-up of Eli's mud-caked face when he is chiding his father: it evokes iconic images of anguished religious figures.

As I said in another post, "TWBB" has all the characteristics of a film directed by an old man: the austerity, the formalist's rigor, and the absence of sensational elements (sex, gore, pop music). I would say excessive formalism is a narrow (and favorable) manner of conducting aesthetics. I agree that this narrowness allows for fewer mistakes and could describe 3/4 of "TWBB." The final scene in the bowling alley, we see Anderson let go of the formalist's leash on Daniel Day-Lewis's grim mad dog. I think the direction over the acting in the bowling alley scene is actually expansive, and incongruous to the style of the rest of the film, which is why it's so strange and seems so out of place. Plainview doesn't just lose control, the film loses control. Just as a narrator in a Faulkner novel loses his grasp on sanity, so too does the prose become fragmented and disorienting.

I would've liked to see more scenes between 1911 and 1927, but is it really necessary to see Plainview's relationship with the growing H.W. disintegrating? When you say, "I felt the plot was taking over to such an extent that it wasn't true to the characters," I don't understand how you could feel that way. The plot in that scene requires Daniel to be a bitter, drunken, hateful misanthrope. That's the logical progression of Plainview's exhibited arc. H.W. wanting to become an oil man with his own company might have been transparently manufactured to create an issue with which to sever the relationship, yes, but a severing had to occur.

I felt the car crash in "Kennedy & Heidi" was too deus ex machina, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that contrivance or not, it was necessary. The ends justify the means, I suppose, and as Roger Ebert said of "There Will Be Blood," it has an "...ending that in some peculiar way this material demands, because it could not conclude on an appropriate note -- there has been nothing appropriate about it...Only madness can supply a termination for this story."

Scrolling through the comments I'm not sure if he's been mentioned but at the very least one actor I'm surprised isn't mentioned more here is James Cagney. Talk about big acting...

From his tics and sneers in Angels With Dirty Faces, to his mental breakdown in solitary confinement in Each Dawn I Die and pretty much every moment of White Heat, Cagney grabbed the screen with both hands and gleefully tore it to shreds, to the point where almost no actor could compete with him for the audience's attention... and it was all perfect.

"Tom Cruise - He insists on trying to "show us his range" despite the fact that he clearly doesn't have any. I never see anything like a real live character in any role he plays - it's always just crazy 'ol Tom jumping up and down on the couch trying frantically (but unsucessfully) "for my consideration". "

Are you forgetting Minority Report? I'm definitely not a Tom Cruise fan, but he did a fine job in that movie.

Willem Dafoe has a ton of over the top villain roles, most obviously in Spiderman. I think he's a great actor, and I liked him a lot in Platoon, but most of his OTT villain roles definitely grate on me. I think it may have more to do with his face than his acting.

There are quite some...I'm thinking recente stuff!

Johnny Depp in "Once upon a time in Mexico" was something that went too far but remained great. Same goes for Robin Williams work in "The Fisher King".

On the other hand, Jeremy Piven's performance in "Smokin' Aces" was something I'm still trying to forget...

"Can you think of a fingernails-on-a-blackboard performance is that makes you seriously uncomfortable and that you admire?"

Sharon Stone in "Casino." I guess the admiration is really for Scorsese, that he got that out of her.

"Can you think of a fingernails-on-a-blackboard performance is that makes you seriously uncomfortable and that you admire?"

Sharon Stone in "Casino." I guess the admiration is really for Scorsese, that he got that out of her.

You mentioned Shelley Duvall's performance in the Shining, and it was this performance that was the impetus for a short film I did back in college.

The Range of Shelley Duvall

Her performance is as if she found this place between two walls that were frenzy and mania and bounced back and forth between them at an accelerating speed.

However, Nicholson's reaction to her when she tells him someone tried to strangle Danny is one of my favorite all time delivered lines.

JIM-

i guess what it boils down to is a matter of preference (doesn't everything?) and context.

I get the sense sometimes, that you aren't going to be happy with a films' realism or subtlety until... (warning, hyperbole ahead)... it is boiled down to a single shot of people barely moving or talking.

And there are good examples of this kind of work (clearly not literally). Lost in Translation is one of my favorite films, and to stick with the Bill Murray theme, so is Broken Flowers. These are two films that are incredibly subtle and understated, with the latter having Bill Murray essentially boil his performance down to eye shifts and perfectly timed half-gestures. Great stuff.

But to compare a performance like that to DDL in TWBB is doing an injustice to Murray, Lewis, AND the craft of acting itself.

It's like the debate in literature over Naturalism and, say, Romance or something else. Dreiser can be great, but so can Melville, or Poe. Context, context, context.

I don't know how much of acting you have studied, and although I am no Phillip Seymor Hoffman, I have studied it and do theatre. And there is more to acting than simply representing reality. Granted, there have been great films containing great performances that mimic reality. And I like those. I think of Ryan Goslings performance in Half Nelson, which strove for ultimate realism. One of my favorite performances in several years.

But when Brando does his thing in On The Waterfront, or DeNiro does his 'best' Brando inpersonation in Raging Bull, or DDL asks Henry if he's "envious" in TWBB....there is more at work there than realism.

They bring out something intangible. A force. A power. And it goes beyond "being big" as some may say. It's important to remember that acting and film is not necessarily a means to an end.

This may get us into a debate about film and acting theory, but here is goes: Is a performance merely a utilitarian thing? Should it merely exists to mimic or achieve reality? Or is the performance something inandof itself?

It's like the American New wave directors. Until the 60's and 70's, with few exceptions, directors basically served as utilities by which a story was told, a film was made, money was gotten. Then we were influenced by the 'foreign' work coming in, and with it, The Auteur Theory.

Suddenly, the director was an artist, not a tool. Filmmaking began to draw some attention to itself, as modeled in 'Breathless' with the jump cuts in the car for instance, which existed (it seemed) for no other purpose other than for the sake of the art itself. "This looks good and that's it!"

Why not afford the same freedom to capable actors, when the material calls for it?

Are there gross examples of overacting? Dear God, yes. In fact, probably 90% of "big acting" as you call it, is unnecessary, sloppy, lazy, and just plain bad.

But I guess therein lies the debate. When is it good? When is it bad? When does the material call for it? Those are legitimate questions.

But one cannot simply write off a performance because it draws attention to itself. Personally I do not love the writing of N. Hawthorne. It's too whimsical, too wordy, too self-aware for me. But i recognize a great writer when I read them, and he is a great writer.

I'm sure I'll think of other points to make, but am I coming across decently clear?

Nicolas Cage in "Vampire's Kiss" is extraordinarily over-the-top...a deadly combination of weird drawl and psychopathology.

Maybe it was just me but did anyone think Denzel Washington was proof of those who can't do over the top - the perfomance left me cold. As opposed to Say Caine, Oldman, Whitaker, Depp etc. who can do either restrained or larger than life.

Marc - I'll give you "Minority Report", I really like that one too, and Tom was at least watchable in it. I guess even a blind squirrel will find a nut now and then.

Maybe it's Spielberg - I'm similarly down on Leo "King of the World" DiCaprio, but I really liked him in "Catch Me If You Can".

Jesse - Great call on "Casino". Both Stone and Pesci essentially scream at the top of their lungs the whole movie (throw in a little James Woods and it's like the Overacting Special Olymipics) but they're exactly what the movie calls for: they give it that "watching a train wreck in slow motion" quality - you want to look away, but somehow you can't. They're a great counterpoint to the very dialed-down DeNiro and the rest of the supporting cast (it always cracks me up to see Don Rickles in that flick when it runs on cable).

As for Shatner, come on folks...that's just too easy to be sporting. Didn't your mommas teach you not to make fun of people's disabilities.

In Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," Jack Nicholson plays a guy who, as one wag said about Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood," starts off insane and goes even more insane. The End. But this raises the question: Isn't "too much" precisely the point in some movies?

That's sorta what I thought when people complained about Pacino going over the top in The Devil's Advocate, a movie I like unabashedly. How, exactly, do you go over the top when playing THE DEVIL?

The Coens seem to be the best and worst when getting comedic performances. I can't get enough of Raising Arizona, though Holly Hunter erupting into "I love him SO MUCH!" makes me cringe about half the time... and laugh hysterically the other half. But you could not pay me money to see the shamefully stupid mugging in O Brother again.

I'm surprised to see no mention of Bjork's performance in "Dancer in the Dark." It was not over-the-top; it was beyond the infinite realm of acting. I say that with affection. Her vulnerable, submissive caricature felt exorcised from the depths of Iceland. It warranted an Oscar nod--if not the statue (Julia Roberts won that year for "Erin Broko-who-gives-a-vich).

But for grating, cringe-evoking miscalculations:

Tim Robbins in "The Hudsucker Proxy."
Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Basketball Diaries."
Sally Field in "Steel Magnolias."

Gary Oldman in the The Professional (EEEVVVVERRRYYYYOOONNNNEEEE!!!!!) and who can forget the ultimate over-the-top character, Hannibal Lecter. Anyone who has read any of the books knows that is the only sensible way that character can be played and Anthony Hopkins made it the stuff of nightmares.

Here's one to debate: Marlon Brando in the Island of Dr. Moreau. Bad movie, but is the performance good?

Still haven't seen TWBB, but heard an interesting interview on NPR with Paul Dano. He was called in at the last minute for his part and had 4 days to prepare, while Daniel Day Lewis rehearsed with Anderson for an entire year! He was pretty scared. On that basis alone, I want to see how the performances compared - one painstakingly planned, while the other just reacting and winging it. There's a whole debate right there - spontaneous versus rehearsed.

Geoffrey Rush (Barbossa) in the "Pirates" franchise was accused of chewing the scenery in nearly every review I read. He is also one of perhaps three pleasant memories that I have of either sequel.

If the performance HADN'T been hammy, it would have been unconvincing. Can you imagine delivering lines in the vein of "Arrr matey!" with subtlety?

I am not a fan of Gary Oldman's over-the-top performances, which is to say I am generally not a fan of his work. I think Leon (or The Professional) is a terrible movie (I have had more coherent nightmares than Luc Besson's entire back catalogue), and Oldman's performance only serves to make it worse.

Off the top of my head, the only performance of his that I've enjoyed is his turn as Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins. Then again, in that film, he was less Commissioner
Gordon then he was Ned Flanders. Which is fine by me.

How about Clancy M*****-F****** Brown in Shawshawnk? Perfection, thy name is overacting.

Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense - big, broad, brassy, and believable.

Entire cast of The Birdcage.

Could the next topic be under-acting - over the top characters played into low-key nothingness by poor casting or directing? (Helena Bonham Carter in Sweeney Todd comes to mind...)

Ali, Gary Oldman was brilliant in "The Professional" despite the fact it was a trashy mediocre film.

You probably though Dennis Hopper was terrible in "Blue Velvet" too.

I'm glad Linda mentioned Peter O'Toole, above. Although, in addition to L.ofA. , I would add Eli Cross in The Stunt Man as a scene-chewing over-the-top director.

Two performances by Gene Hackman certainly qualify as among the best. Harold the Blind Monk in Young Frankenstein (which also is the greatest uncredited cameo of all time), and Lex Luthor in Superman.

His sublime talent in comedy fully reveals the extent of his genius. In the inevitable future Oscar memorial to him, I'd much rather see clips of Harold, lamenting that he can't make Frankenstein a cappuccino, and ripping the wig off his head in Superman, than clips of Buck Barrow and the sheriff in Unforgiven.

Geoffrey Rush's overbroad comedy in Shakespeare in Love was really the only Oscar-worthy thing about the movie. Of course, he was nominated for his sullen, dour, and dreary work in Elizabeth instead.

Proof that broad don't equal bad. It just takes a great actor to pull it off.

Speaking of Gene Hackman (and in an effort to drift further from the topic at hand), his work in "The Royal Tenenbaums" was absolute genius.

Just thought of one; Wild At Heart. Good lord did the cast ham that one up to the point of unwatchability.

The first three Die-Hard movies were chock full of overacting. But then again, these movies were also chock full of over-the-top action sequences.

Even Bruce Willis, known for his calm demeanor in the face of chaos raging around him, had some seriously odd moments of hyperactivity, especially in his fight sequence in the first movie with Alexander Godunov.

Hart Bochner as Ellis was rather annoying, overdoing the whole "sniffing because I just snorted more cocaine that Scarface" routine. But we were supposed to find him annoying. He was the one hostage you wanted to get killed.

But Alan Rickman really takes the hamcake, making one of the more memorable screen villains. His leering sneers are his trademark, even if they are overdone to the point of making his face look like it was about to crack.

They did a really good job carrying this spirit throughout next 2. The newest one was actually a little more toned down in comparison.

Alfred Molina's turn as the drug dealer in that unforgettable scene at the end of BOOGIE NIGHTS !

(Though I realize that his performance is greatly enhanced by PTA's magnificient direction, editing and use of music)

A couple of older OTTP that are good are Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park. And Ron Moody as Fagin in Oliver! Great stuff. I also think Nicole Kidman did some pretty heavy, exagerated stuff in Moulin Rouge, but that it mostly works. And don't forget Kevin Kline's brilliance in A Fish Called Wanda.

TOM HANKS!!!

Are you kidding? AL PACINO!!!! Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice for All, that devil movie, jeez. Except for the Godfather movies (oops, forgot Godfather III), everything! Scent of a Woman. Richard III. He's over the top when he's being himself. I LOVE HIM! He goes sooooooo far but it's never too far because as I once had a director tell me he's always still in his relationship(s) with the other actors, never off on some tangent. But who has ever been bigger?

Star Trek II has the greatest hammy acting experience for me. William Shatner is matched overemotion to overemotion by Ricardo Montalban

Can't we just call this the Al Pacino Award? Even he knows it; half of his "crazy Al" lines in Heat were followed by a self-mocking aside ("Scary, aren't I?). His inches speech in Any Given Sunday made me want leap through the screen and suit up.

Gary Oldman is great too, but his moments are as much unconventional as they are big (same for Cage & Depp).

How could you forget one of the truly larger-than-life actors to ever spam up the screen -- Anthony Quinn? From Auda Ibu Tayi in LOA to Zorba to Lust for Life to Viva Zapata, the man was a bellowing, snorting, scenery devouring porkchop. And we loved him for it. Even when paired with formidable overactors (Brando, Douglas), he always compelled you to watch him.

As for the fingernail/blackboard roles, I'd go with Mickey Rooney as Puck in Midsummer Nights Dream (def. love/hate thing going there);
Edward Everett Horton whenever paired with Astaire (god-awful, yet oddly charming);
Randy Quaid in Independence Day, who irks me totally until that final moment when he saves all mankind;
Kevin Costner in Robin Hood, who is so totally unconvincing, but makes such a great foil for the superb broadsword "finesse" of Alan Rickman;
and finally Bette Davis and Jimmy Cagney in The Bride Came COD, who are so thoroughly hammy, they actually eat bacon in at least two scenes.

This is a great topic, and I have to admit a weakness for on-camera braggodocio -- I'll take a Lancaster or a Douglas romping and brawling over all the introspective, twitchy actors any day. Hey, a big screen needs big actors!

Vincent Price in The Pit and the Pendulum. Priceless! And nearly matched by horror queen, Barbara Steele. Great flick!

Jimmy Stewart when he gets "riled" in Anthony Mann westerns. (I agree with one poster that Stewart was just fantastic in Vertigo.)...P.S. - William Hurt - yes, his performances can be understated, but he is just perfect in Body Heat.

I think if the actor is one of the greats than it's always a pleasure to watch them going over the top. I'm thinking Brando as Corleone, Pacino as Montana, De Niro as Cady, Day Lewis as Bill.

However, the painful ones come when some teen star attempts it. I'm thinking Jeepers Creepers 2.

Also, although I like him, James Dean goes a bit off in a couple of parts of Rebel Without a Cause. But I suppose he can get away with it.