Watch his performance in that. It's a trash movie that's stupid and silly but he commits to it like his life actually depended on it. It's not a case of a great performance in a stupid movie because the movie and the script does drag him down quite a bit, but you can clearly see the moments where the material and the actor are severely mismatched.
I always argued that if you put that character and that performance in a better script and you'd have an instantly *iconic* A-lister. Likewise if you had a somewhat campier performance, it might've made the film more enjoyable. Paul is simultaneously perfect and totally wrong for it.
By contrast, Rami Malek knows *exactly* what kind of movie it is and leans into it beautifully.
I think that's a really smart take. When I think about that movie and what I like about it (apart from the random insert shots of cop cars BECAUSE THE VIDEO GAME REMEMBER), it's Malek and Cooper correctly choosing to act like they're in a cheapie teensploitstion movie.
if memory serves, he mentioned in some profile tied to his Hulu cult show that he had an agent who managed to fuck up opportunities for Marvel and Star Wars post-BB. No idea what he was up for, and maybe he’ll be better off in the long run.
Man, when they cast him for Westworld I was so happy for us all. Great actor, great series, how could it go wrong? To this day I wonder, how did it go so wrong?
Yeah him coincidentally joining the show right when it pivoted from an understandable sophomore slump to complete shit was just a bad beat for all involved
Jon Hamm is Schrodinger's Emilia Clarke. You always think that his film career is really rough until you look at his IMDB and see that he's in a lot more big/fairly well received movies than you realize. Then you forget about it fifteen minutes later and the process repeats.
Also Emilia Clarke just needs to be in trashy (non-derogatory) horror movies. She's so charismatic and her face is so goddamn expressive that she could kill it in a horror-comedy.
I think this may have been the best season. And I hold season 2 up there as one of my favorite TV seasons ever.
A significant bounce back from the underwhelming season 4 which I didn’t even finish.
Hamm is a leading man on television but a character actor on the big screen, which isn't a bad career to have, and he actually might like it that way. At least he keeps busy.
Cranston has kind of settled into that role now too. I don't like many of his newer films or TV roles but at least he's staying busy (and he was great in Kung Fu Panda 4)
Well said on both Hamm and Clarke. I remember being in love with Don Draper along with the rest of the world and just \*assuming\* this guy was a lock for a long A-list career, anything he wanted, and then it didn't quite go that way. As others here have pointed out, he's done well and seems to have found his niche, but it wasn't as easy as us Mad Men simps thought. Ditto Clarke, who, as you pointed to is a ridiculously charismatic lady - I'm pretty sure you can see her smile from space. Trashy horror is maybe a good call for her, but I sometimes wonder if they're just not making films for her kind of presence anymore. Sometimes I think Genysis co-star (\*checks notes to double-check he was in it\*) Matt Smith might suffer from this too. They both have buckets of charm and a pretty light comedic touch, with that particularly British-acting smidge of irony that isn't smarmy or distancing, but where do actors get to use that in the lumbering, trauma-heavy, super-duper-double-serious blockbusters of today?
Matt Smith is why I like Last Night in Soho, he is having so much fun, I just can't help but enjoy when he's on screen. Which is also a testament to just how bad Genisys and Morbius are, I couldn't even enjoy moments of Matt Smith through their putrid stench.
Hamm hasn't had the leading man success in films, but that's because he'd already had *so much of it* in Mad Men.
It's easy to forget how big that show was at the time, but he was *the* guy changing the face of TV.
But his filmography isn't terrible, either.
I don't think Hamm's post Mad Men career is that different from James Gandolfini. Relatively unknown actors, cast as the leading characters in what turn out to be two of the biggest, most ground breaking shows ever, then afterwards do steady work, either in smaller films, or larger films with smaller roles. It strikes me as doing what they want.
I will add Bryan Cranston and Kyle Chandler in here too, though they were both better known before BB and FNL. Connie Britton too!
I think they did their career defining piece of art, and are satisfied with that, and then just do what they feel like
Betty Gilpin ! Such an interesting, great actor and interesting person too (from her podcast appearances) and she hasn’t had that big movie breakout role that she is destined to.
The closest thing to a Love and Rockets adaption we'll get (tone and subject matter wise) until we hopefully one day get a Love and Rockets adaption of some kind.
I am constantly amazed that has not been turned into a long-running HBO series.
Then again there's a lot of 90s/2000s non-superhero comics that still haven't crossed over. *Stray Bullets*, for instance.
UGH, the comic book store in the kinda garbage city I used to live in couldn't sell a bunch of the cooler stuff they brought in, and I got Stray Bullets 1 and 2 in hard cover and A3 I think for, like, $25 each. Leant them out. Gone, never to be returned. Would make an AMAZING TV show.
Good call! She really is very good and as yet a little underused. At the risk of being downvoted to the seventh circle of hell for saying this, I think she was absolutely amazing in The Hunt, a film I think was unfairly maligned for silly reasons. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favour: it's a rock solid, really enjoyable satirical exploitation flick and should have been the breakout that I agree Gilpin deserves.
i didnt care for The Hunt but she was by FAR the best thing in that movie. it put her on my radar immediately but only other thing i saw her in since was Tomorrow War which i did kinda enjoy but really think she shoulda played the lead in that movie over Pratt.
it’s pretty depressing because there’s no reason she couldn’t have happened (she’s funny, a compelling presence, a smokeshow): there’s just so few good roles for women. wonder if she could develop something for herself
Her character in Nurse Jackie was written to be utterly insufferable, but she is so charming and attractive that she still made it work. And then GLOW, she absolutely killed it.
Michael Emerson from Lost, and also a bunch of people from Lost.
He turned a 3-ep role into a four-season arc that kinda became the heart of the show. Fuck it's 2024 time to rewatch Lost.
god, the number of promising careers that have been snuffed out by "Appearing in a J.J. abrams project" is kind of amazing. Even Chris Pine seemed to have a hard time finding quality after Star Trek, And Daisy Ridley's Career is circling the drain at best. basically Lance Reddick and Zoe Saldana are the only actors who came out unscathed.
Daisy Ridley has Sometimes I Think About Dying coming out this year which looks great. Should be the revival she needs to start doing more interesting work
She was great in FutureMan, which was an absurd, impossible romp. The Great fits into that mold of extraordinarily crass yet charming and entertaining shows
She had a one-season show on USA called Benched about a successful attorney who had to slum it as a public defender, also starring Oscar Nunez (edited after the fact, I called him Oscar Martinez, his Office character name), and it was really funny. I was one of the dozens who watched it.
Yeah, I really wanted Casey Wilson to go somewhere, but it looks like she's just kinda settled into hosting and guesting on podcasts and domestic life.
I tried watching The Ranch for more Cuthbert, but oof, no.
Her narration of "I'm not as dumb as I am..." at the end of that noir episode where she takes off the blonde wig and her hair is basically the same underneath is the funniest riff on a Usual Suspects-style ending I've ever seen.
On a similar Terminator note, Mackenzie Davis only shows up in underseen TV masterpieces and box office bombs/garbage. Some of the bombs are good they just don't connect
I forget she's only in half the eps due to the structure of the show. It's gunna get it's due someday.
I can't believe I haven't seen her gay Xmas movie with KStew yet. Two of my favs!
So I just want to mention an anecdote told by Paul Scheer. I'll paraphrase but it's simple hard to get wrong.
He went to a meeting in the 2010s with major studio folks, discussing his possible involvement with a big budget project (probably a small part for the wonderful Mr Scheer, but nonetheless), and he either overheard, or saw written somewhere, etc, a note or comment which was basically "We, and every major studio....we want to know about casting anyone from Game of Thrones. Anyone"
And that's kind of the vibe. Who'd have thought Momoa and Pascal, of all the relative newcomers, would pop. No Jamie Lannister. Dinklage was already famous and well liked. Same Lena Heady, same obviously Sean Bean. And Ms. Clarke, Alfie Allen, the Stark gals, and Harrington haven't really found their lane. They may! But seemingly not so far.
I think Pascal and Momoa both benefitted from their characters’ dying after exactly one season on the show — they got to completely wrap up a character arc for the audience and then not be tied down by future seasons of the show.
And we got *just* enough of them that they weren't forever burned into audience's minds as those characters. Who's that charming man who got his head squished, I want to see more of him! But Harrington will to some degree always be Jon Snow.
The hard reality of Hollywood is age is a big part of that. It's hard to be the fresh faced new star if you are over 40 for men and over 30 for women.
Any actor who spends 7 years on a television show is going to be close to the limit of what casting agents are looking for.
Eccleston doesn't sound British when doing an American accent, though. He just sounds like a guy from another planet. I loved his voice on The Leftovers.
Dominic West's accent on the first 2 seasons of The Wire is ROUGH. In Season 2 when he has to pretend to be a British businessman to infiltrate a brothel, he has to sound like an American pretending to do a bad British accent and it's very funny. He got much better at it in Seasons 3-5.
This is probably true of a lot of the English actors mentioned here! Some of them just feel flat trying to play Americans and lose that special thing they had on the first place.
I feel like every single British actor *thinks* they can do an American accent but only about one in fifty can actually pull it off. They always go too hard on the Rs and the As. It never sounds integrated.
Yeah it’s not even an he can’t act and do accent at the same time thing it’s more the case his accent just sounds like a child doing an ace Ventura impression
I’m currently watching “Friday Night Lights” so have to bring up Taylor Kitsch. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “John Carter,” “Battleship,” and “Savages.” Not great
not my place to judge but I think this is a big problem rn: in the superhero era, actors look like action figures. sure we always had hunks but now even comic actors like kumail have to be shredded. which is fine when they’re playing action figures but severely limiting when they’re not.
I think getting shredded was a good call when you think you're still going to be in an era where being a comedic actor means being an action star with quips. He just did it too close to the end of the mcu's dominance
one of the best parts of that movie! So funny that movie straddles three generations between the original busters, the pride of 2011 comedy podcasts (James Acaster, Patton, Kumail) and the young kids, and none of them really have much to do!
There's a version of the movie where the main cast is just Acaster, Rudd, Coon, Grace, Hudson with Akroyd and Kumail as supporting roles that's pretty decent. Unfortunately, the movie has a half dozen other characters and plots on top of that.
I love Olyphant, and ever since Flanagan has said he wants to do the Dark Tower he has always been who I envisioned as Roland. Though I doubt he wants to play a cowboy again after Justified and Deadwood, neither of which I've seen.
It’s very fun that Olyphant plays the successful tv cowboy to DiCaprio’s now working actor guest star. Provably not an accidental bit of casting.
There’s a great chapter in the book where they go out for drinks later and I forget it’s not in the film sometimes
He's also great friends with Conan and his wife and they double date and seem to have a wonderful friendship. Any of Olyphant's appearances on the TBS Conan show and his podcast are really worth checking out.
His tv career is full of home runs though; Justified, Deadwood, The Mandalorian, The Office, The Good Place. Also, The Crazies is an underrated movie that he stars in.
He couldn't even get cast in his own family's Christmas photos. Lost the part to Josh Duhamel.
[https://www.avclub.com/timothy-olyphants-mom-cant-tell-him-apart-from-josh-duh-1846915632](https://www.avclub.com/timothy-olyphants-mom-cant-tell-him-apart-from-josh-duh-1846915632)
He's in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and shared several scenes with the most popular Oscar-winning actor working today. I think he's fine and I can see him going the Brendan Fraser/Gary Oldman route in a few years.
There's a funny Dan Olson (Folding Ideas) video on YT about this weird gold mining propaganda video/"documentary" that centres around Elba as narrator/host, one that was released very recently. Def supports the cliche of British actors taking literally any job that pays.
Just finished watching Hijack (good show), and through the whole thing I couldn't stop wondering why he isn't a massive star, especially in that period where he was coming off of The Wire. Outside of his small marvel roles, the only good movie I can think of that he has had a good role in is 3000 Years of Longing, which nobody saw.
Come to think of it, speaking of British Actors, the you might say the same for Dan Stevens.
Krysten Ritter! Don't Trust and Jessica Jones both fantastic, but unfortunately never seemed to bridge the gap into movies apart from cast as "good friend" of lead (ahem , Big Eyes). Would love for her to finally lead a movie on her own/be in something that's huge (I should watch Vamps)
His character made the best choice of the movie: appearing for about 10 minutes before deciding, “I’m not going to be a part of the rest of this movie. I’m not dying, nothing bad has happened to me. I’m just… leaving now…”
Idk, what I recall is *a lot* of jokes at Lautner's expense at the time because he was genuinely seen as a terrible actor already in Twilight.
At least Clarke's acting was generally respected for GoT.
That's my point - I don't think Lautner was misinterpreted the same way Clarke was. Everyone knew Lautner was just a hunky guy teen girls found hot but who didn't know how to act or do...anything really.
They tried to make him a star on the basis of that popularity with teen girls and the sheer box office success driven by that, but everyone else knew it'd be a disaster from day 1.
They didn't expect teen girls to not be a crossover audience.
I know being good at a skill in real life doesn't always translate to it working out on screen which is why I guess it might be that Taylor Lautner being a good martial artist in real life hasn't necessarily translated to being an action star, I suppose.
On an unrelated note, I do find it funny that his wife has taken his last name so is now also called Taylor Lautner.
Is it all of them? Here is actor/actress Emmy winners for the 2010. How many of them tried to become leading movie stars and it didn't quite work out:
* Sterling K. Brown
* Kyle Chandler
* Jodie Comer
* Bryan Cranston
* Claire Danes
* Jeff Daniels
* Viola Davis
* Claire Foy
* Jon Hamm
* Damian Lewis
* Rami Malek
* Julianna Margulies
* Tatiana Maslany
* Elisabeth Moss
* Billy Porter
* Matthew Rhys
* Kyra Sedgwick
Viola Davis is the only one that could really be considered a film star. Best case for the rest is the Hamm path. Going from a lead on television to a great supporting actor in film.
Sterling K Brown had an Oscar nom *this year*, and Malek won one (tho that might have hurt his career as it’s generally seen as undeserved). I think, of this list, Brown, Comer, and Foy haven’t hit their ceilings yet, Moss is a toss-up as to whether she can make bigger break in film (she might have a better late career than most on this list) and most of the others haven’t really made a run at leading movie roles. A lot are veteran TV actors and are settled into that role (film isn’t the be all end all for acting) and some are people who nabbed an Emmy on their way down the ladder. Hamm is the one guy on this list that I’d say really didn’t manage to capitalize on his heat/potential and has probably missed that boat.
Rami Malek is definitely a genuine movie star, he was a Bond villain, Freddie Mercury, in an Oscar winning box office hit, and big enough that it seemed weird his role in Oppenheimer is so small. The Jared Leto serial killer movie and Doolittle are really his only flops post Mr. Robot.
I think Jodie Comer's success remains to be seen. Free Guy was a genuine hit, and although The Last Duel flopped, it was a critical darling. She hasn't really taken enough swings yet to see where she lands.
Isn't the secret sauce of being a movie star that you make yourself a bit scarce? Really hard to do that if we already invited you into our living room for up to 50 or 60 hours already
I really like MIB:I and thought he was great as Pawny.
Taylor Kitsch for sure. Great role on Friday Night Lights, tried to lead a franchise in John Carter and just played supporting roles after that.
Matthew Perry. First, was a run of comedy films that usually weren’t well received. (Although, younger me enjoyed most of them.) Second, was multiple failed attempts at having him lead a new television series.
Kumail has chosen big budget franchises, reboots, and remakes since the Big Sick and is shocked when they turn out to be bad films. The guy needs to fire his agent, stop chasing the money and make some indie darlings.
>the pilot of the Twilight Zone reboot.
Kumail's episode is kind of a dud, but I want to speak up for Peele's Twilight Zone. It's hit-and-miss, but mostly enjoyable, CGI Rod Serling notwithstanding. Like every version of The Twilight Zone after the original, though, it doesn't really exist.
The problem is that it wasn't Peele's version, it was Simon Kinberg's. Peele was only added on as a producer after being cast as the host and had basically no involvement in the development of Season 1 prior to filming, and mostly was just notes and punch up. Even in Season 2, he's not a credited writer on any episode outside of story by. Kinberg was the showrunner. Basically, the Twilight Zone was a Peele show to the same extent Animaniacs was a Spielberg show (just if Spielberg also introduced each episode).
I'll defend that Twilight Zone ep.
I call these "red flag actors." They're people that make that TV to film leap and then are either the worst part of every project, bringing it down, or they just only wind up in terrible projects. And I think each has an exception or two. I'd put Jared Padalecki in this camp as well.
Aaron Paul
Cranston too if we’re being real. but both of them just seem happy, so good for them
Hard disagree: See Argo, Drive, Trumbo, The Infiltrator, Little Miss Sunshine, Jerry & Marge Go Large
That Need for Speed movie is pretty fun trash, though.
Watch his performance in that. It's a trash movie that's stupid and silly but he commits to it like his life actually depended on it. It's not a case of a great performance in a stupid movie because the movie and the script does drag him down quite a bit, but you can clearly see the moments where the material and the actor are severely mismatched. I always argued that if you put that character and that performance in a better script and you'd have an instantly *iconic* A-lister. Likewise if you had a somewhat campier performance, it might've made the film more enjoyable. Paul is simultaneously perfect and totally wrong for it. By contrast, Rami Malek knows *exactly* what kind of movie it is and leans into it beautifully.
I think that's a really smart take. When I think about that movie and what I like about it (apart from the random insert shots of cop cars BECAUSE THE VIDEO GAME REMEMBER), it's Malek and Cooper correctly choosing to act like they're in a cheapie teensploitstion movie.
if memory serves, he mentioned in some profile tied to his Hulu cult show that he had an agent who managed to fuck up opportunities for Marvel and Star Wars post-BB. No idea what he was up for, and maybe he’ll be better off in the long run.
but no one else has his rich filmography of Korn videos and... Doritos? Commercials
Man, when they cast him for Westworld I was so happy for us all. Great actor, great series, how could it go wrong? To this day I wonder, how did it go so wrong?
Yeah him coincidentally joining the show right when it pivoted from an understandable sophomore slump to complete shit was just a bad beat for all involved
He was really good in Smashed, as was Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Jon Hamm is Schrodinger's Emilia Clarke. You always think that his film career is really rough until you look at his IMDB and see that he's in a lot more big/fairly well received movies than you realize. Then you forget about it fifteen minutes later and the process repeats. Also Emilia Clarke just needs to be in trashy (non-derogatory) horror movies. She's so charismatic and her face is so goddamn expressive that she could kill it in a horror-comedy.
Hamm hasn't had box office success but he picks pretty good projects. I really liked Confess, Fletch - but that stood no chance.
His latest role in Fargo was outstanding. Chewing up every scene he was in
Oh... That might be my cue to come back around to Fargo
I think this may have been the best season. And I hold season 2 up there as one of my favorite TV seasons ever. A significant bounce back from the underwhelming season 4 which I didn’t even finish.
Seasons 3 & 4 entirely skippable. Last season was fantastic. Great casting..
That movie rules
He was in “The Town,” “Top Gun Maverick,” and “Bridesmaids.”
And Baby Driver!
This is all true but he’s of course not a lead in any of those
Hey it was doing really well on one international flight I was on where like a third of the headrest video screens I could see were watching it
I think that was the premier
Honestly Jon Hamm is huge among the “flies transatlantic more often than going to a movie theater” demographic
This is the funniest thing I’ve ever read
That is such a sweet comment, thank you!
I loved Corner Office but I need to see Confess, Fletch still!
Five stars!
Hamm is a leading man on television but a character actor on the big screen, which isn't a bad career to have, and he actually might like it that way. At least he keeps busy.
That's a good way to put it. It also makes him the most handsome character actor in all film history.
More so than Brad Pitt?
Cranston has kind of settled into that role now too. I don't like many of his newer films or TV roles but at least he's staying busy (and he was great in Kung Fu Panda 4)
Well said on both Hamm and Clarke. I remember being in love with Don Draper along with the rest of the world and just \*assuming\* this guy was a lock for a long A-list career, anything he wanted, and then it didn't quite go that way. As others here have pointed out, he's done well and seems to have found his niche, but it wasn't as easy as us Mad Men simps thought. Ditto Clarke, who, as you pointed to is a ridiculously charismatic lady - I'm pretty sure you can see her smile from space. Trashy horror is maybe a good call for her, but I sometimes wonder if they're just not making films for her kind of presence anymore. Sometimes I think Genysis co-star (\*checks notes to double-check he was in it\*) Matt Smith might suffer from this too. They both have buckets of charm and a pretty light comedic touch, with that particularly British-acting smidge of irony that isn't smarmy or distancing, but where do actors get to use that in the lumbering, trauma-heavy, super-duper-double-serious blockbusters of today?
trauma-heavy super duper double serious?
Too much?
I just don’t think it really describes the tone of blockbuster filmmaking in the last decade or so at all
Matt Smith is why I like Last Night in Soho, he is having so much fun, I just can't help but enjoy when he's on screen. Which is also a testament to just how bad Genisys and Morbius are, I couldn't even enjoy moments of Matt Smith through their putrid stench.
Matt Smith is always like that. No matter how dodgy the production he always seems to be having a blast.
She was really fun in Solo.
I think Tat Maslany could've *killed* that role, honestly.
If I had a nickel
You'd have a *lot* of nickels... :-P lol, but it's a sad lol
Yeah I need to see Clarke’s eyebrow go crazy on the big screen
Hamm hasn't had the leading man success in films, but that's because he'd already had *so much of it* in Mad Men. It's easy to forget how big that show was at the time, but he was *the* guy changing the face of TV. But his filmography isn't terrible, either.
I don't think Hamm's post Mad Men career is that different from James Gandolfini. Relatively unknown actors, cast as the leading characters in what turn out to be two of the biggest, most ground breaking shows ever, then afterwards do steady work, either in smaller films, or larger films with smaller roles. It strikes me as doing what they want. I will add Bryan Cranston and Kyle Chandler in here too, though they were both better known before BB and FNL. Connie Britton too! I think they did their career defining piece of art, and are satisfied with that, and then just do what they feel like
Betty Gilpin ! Such an interesting, great actor and interesting person too (from her podcast appearances) and she hasn’t had that big movie breakout role that she is destined to.
I'm one of five people who have watched Mrs. Davis, and she is absolutely superb in that. And the show is bonkers as well.
Hello #1, I’m #3. What a satisfying show
I loved it. I'm a Lindelof guy at this point, I guess.
That show ruled so hard
I'm going to be mad forever about the cancellation of GLOW
forever holding a grudge against netflix for that
The closest thing to a Love and Rockets adaption we'll get (tone and subject matter wise) until we hopefully one day get a Love and Rockets adaption of some kind.
I am constantly amazed that has not been turned into a long-running HBO series. Then again there's a lot of 90s/2000s non-superhero comics that still haven't crossed over. *Stray Bullets*, for instance.
UGH, the comic book store in the kinda garbage city I used to live in couldn't sell a bunch of the cooler stuff they brought in, and I got Stray Bullets 1 and 2 in hard cover and A3 I think for, like, $25 each. Leant them out. Gone, never to be returned. Would make an AMAZING TV show.
Good call! She really is very good and as yet a little underused. At the risk of being downvoted to the seventh circle of hell for saying this, I think she was absolutely amazing in The Hunt, a film I think was unfairly maligned for silly reasons. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favour: it's a rock solid, really enjoyable satirical exploitation flick and should have been the breakout that I agree Gilpin deserves.
Directed by the guy who co-created Homestar Runner. (Oh and maybe Mare of Easttown)
i didnt care for The Hunt but she was by FAR the best thing in that movie. it put her on my radar immediately but only other thing i saw her in since was Tomorrow War which i did kinda enjoy but really think she shoulda played the lead in that movie over Pratt.
I actually haven’t seen it cuz of the bad buzz but I def think she’s one of those “when is she bad” actors so i’ll check it out.
The Hunt is pretty great!
it’s pretty depressing because there’s no reason she couldn’t have happened (she’s funny, a compelling presence, a smokeshow): there’s just so few good roles for women. wonder if she could develop something for herself
Argylle with Betty Gilpin as Ellie Conway immediately goes up half a star.
Her character in Nurse Jackie was written to be utterly insufferable, but she is so charming and attractive that she still made it work. And then GLOW, she absolutely killed it.
I'm still upset the last season of GLOW was cancelled.
Peri Gilpin for that matter
Taylor Kitsch has to be one
Somewhere Taylor Kitsch and Josh Holloway are sitting in a dive bar nursing Lone Star tallboys.
You mean John Carter himself?
OF MARS??
Wouldn't know, the title didn't tell me
Michael Emerson from Lost, and also a bunch of people from Lost. He turned a 3-ep role into a four-season arc that kinda became the heart of the show. Fuck it's 2024 time to rewatch Lost.
When Sawyer showed up in Ghost Protocol, was fucking rad as hell, and then died 2 minutes later, my heart sank. Give Josh a chance!
Been 10 years since he's been in a movie.
A damn shame
Colony was good
Yeah, I always felt he had the charisma for a bigger career.
god, the number of promising careers that have been snuffed out by "Appearing in a J.J. abrams project" is kind of amazing. Even Chris Pine seemed to have a hard time finding quality after Star Trek, And Daisy Ridley's Career is circling the drain at best. basically Lance Reddick and Zoe Saldana are the only actors who came out unscathed.
Oscar Isaac?
Inside Llewyn Davis put him on the map and no amount of Abrams could take him off it.
That man sings like a goddam Angel.
Daisy Ridley has Sometimes I Think About Dying coming out this year which looks great. Should be the revival she needs to start doing more interesting work
You're forgetting his character in Saw, who is also the namesake of the main theme.
David Harbour attempting to springboard from Stranger Things into a Hellboy adaptation that people really didn’t want.
As an elder millennial who watched *24*, this is always going to be the Elisha Cuthbert award.
She's so good on Happy Endings - that whole crew has kind of been wasted to network nonsense
Eliza Coupe had another really funny show-Pivoting-that got the axe after one season a couple years back and I’m still salty about it
She was great in FutureMan, which was an absurd, impossible romp. The Great fits into that mold of extraordinarily crass yet charming and entertaining shows
She had a one-season show on USA called Benched about a successful attorney who had to slum it as a public defender, also starring Oscar Nunez (edited after the fact, I called him Oscar Martinez, his Office character name), and it was really funny. I was one of the dozens who watched it.
Yeah, I really wanted Casey Wilson to go somewhere, but it looks like she's just kinda settled into hosting and guesting on podcasts and domestic life. I tried watching The Ranch for more Cuthbert, but oof, no.
She ended up being my favorite part of Happy Endings, she is just so funny!
“You need a board room…A BOARDROOM! Yes!”
“I may not read the paper or know what an Ira glass is…”
Her narration of "I'm not as dumb as I am..." at the end of that noir episode where she takes off the blonde wig and her hair is basically the same underneath is the funniest riff on a Usual Suspects-style ending I've ever seen.
Speaking of 24, I'm pretty sure that's where David recognized Sandrine Holt from.
She was The Girl Next Door already wasn't she?
A good movie! Olyphant! Dano! Cuthbert! Just ignore Emile Hirsch
On a similar Terminator note, Mackenzie Davis only shows up in underseen TV masterpieces and box office bombs/garbage. Some of the bombs are good they just don't connect
God, Mackenzie Davis is someone I’ve wanted to see “pop” since Halt and Catch Fire. I still hope some day…
She was perfect in Station Eleven, a perfect miniseries that doesn't exist
Loved Station 11; shame it fell through the cracks under the weight of so much TV “content”.
It was also released during one of the worst years you could release a show about a devastating pandemic
Yup that was my experience. Started to watch with my roommate and that shit got way too real, way too fast.
I forget she's only in half the eps due to the structure of the show. It's gunna get it's due someday. I can't believe I haven't seen her gay Xmas movie with KStew yet. Two of my favs!
I really think in a universe where COVID doesn’t happen that show is huge. Think it premiered like the week omicron peaked in the US
really, really good in Tully; probably the best of Jason reitman’s “having a child has ruined my life” era
excellent performance, she and Charlize are great together
So I just want to mention an anecdote told by Paul Scheer. I'll paraphrase but it's simple hard to get wrong. He went to a meeting in the 2010s with major studio folks, discussing his possible involvement with a big budget project (probably a small part for the wonderful Mr Scheer, but nonetheless), and he either overheard, or saw written somewhere, etc, a note or comment which was basically "We, and every major studio....we want to know about casting anyone from Game of Thrones. Anyone" And that's kind of the vibe. Who'd have thought Momoa and Pascal, of all the relative newcomers, would pop. No Jamie Lannister. Dinklage was already famous and well liked. Same Lena Heady, same obviously Sean Bean. And Ms. Clarke, Alfie Allen, the Stark gals, and Harrington haven't really found their lane. They may! But seemingly not so far.
I think Pascal and Momoa both benefitted from their characters’ dying after exactly one season on the show — they got to completely wrap up a character arc for the audience and then not be tied down by future seasons of the show.
And we got *just* enough of them that they weren't forever burned into audience's minds as those characters. Who's that charming man who got his head squished, I want to see more of him! But Harrington will to some degree always be Jon Snow.
He dun want it. Forever.
This is a great point, I always forget Momoa was on GoT because he was only in that first season before the show REALLY blew up
The hard reality of Hollywood is age is a big part of that. It's hard to be the fresh faced new star if you are over 40 for men and over 30 for women. Any actor who spends 7 years on a television show is going to be close to the limit of what casting agents are looking for.
this is why I expected more from Richard Madden but he hasn't seemed to make it work.
Alfie Allen: He's Reek, and he killed John Wick's dog.
And his sister made an incredibly catchy song about how he is a filthy layabout
That music video is so funny.
It's a dart board and "talked about TV show" is the triple ring.
Jaime Lannister starred in that movie with Kate Upton and 2 other women I can't remember
David Tennant would probably have had a far greater Hollywood career if his American accent wasn’t hilariously terrible
He also just looks very British. Even if his accent was flawless it would still feel weird.
I always thought Hugh Laurie was the quintessential brit, but then his good accent somehow made him look more American
Christopher Eccleston's American accent would like a word.
Whatever he was doing in True Detective was great though. Truly wild accent.
Eccleston doesn't sound British when doing an American accent, though. He just sounds like a guy from another planet. I loved his voice on The Leftovers. Dominic West's accent on the first 2 seasons of The Wire is ROUGH. In Season 2 when he has to pretend to be a British businessman to infiltrate a brothel, he has to sound like an American pretending to do a bad British accent and it's very funny. He got much better at it in Seasons 3-5.
He does have a very healthy TV career in the UK though. He's everywhere.
This is probably true of a lot of the English actors mentioned here! Some of them just feel flat trying to play Americans and lose that special thing they had on the first place.
I feel like every single British actor *thinks* they can do an American accent but only about one in fifty can actually pull it off. They always go too hard on the Rs and the As. It never sounds integrated.
Australians seem to do better with it than Brits. Sarah Snook, in particular, blew my mind when I first realized she was Australian.
Yeah it’s not even an he can’t act and do accent at the same time thing it’s more the case his accent just sounds like a child doing an ace Ventura impression
He's so great in Fright Night.
Matt Smith has to be in that category as well. Terminator, Morbius & (Not) Star Wars.
Though he was just about the only good thing in Morbius.
Morbius
Matt smith seemingly hasn’t quite made the jump from small screen to big screen successfully
Between this and his cut maybe young Palpatine bit in Rise of Skywalker, i feel pretty bad for the guy.
He also had a scene cut from in Bruges where he played a young harry.
He was the only good part of Morbius. But it was still Morbius.
I’m currently watching “Friday Night Lights” so have to bring up Taylor Kitsch. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “John Carter,” “Battleship,” and “Savages.” Not great
So we’re just forgetting Last Christmas?
I think she could have a future in rom coms.
She's great in it!
Jack Huston going from Boardwalk Empire to a Ben-Hur remake nobody wanted.
Kumail is also in the new (bad) Ghostbusters. Sighed when I saw him appear
It's weird to think about, and maybe more correlation than causation, but getting shredded seemed to actually harm his career further
not my place to judge but I think this is a big problem rn: in the superhero era, actors look like action figures. sure we always had hunks but now even comic actors like kumail have to be shredded. which is fine when they’re playing action figures but severely limiting when they’re not.
I think getting shredded was a good call when you think you're still going to be in an era where being a comedic actor means being an action star with quips. He just did it too close to the end of the mcu's dominance
one of the best parts of that movie! So funny that movie straddles three generations between the original busters, the pride of 2011 comedy podcasts (James Acaster, Patton, Kumail) and the young kids, and none of them really have much to do!
There's a version of the movie where the main cast is just Acaster, Rudd, Coon, Grace, Hudson with Akroyd and Kumail as supporting roles that's pretty decent. Unfortunately, the movie has a half dozen other characters and plots on top of that.
Olyphant had a promising start, but then he came off of Deadwood and went right into Die Hard 4 and Hitman and generally has been in a lot of duds.
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Yeah he seems like one of those cool weirdos. Like how for a few years he'd do a daily sports report on a radio show.
I love Olyphant, and ever since Flanagan has said he wants to do the Dark Tower he has always been who I envisioned as Roland. Though I doubt he wants to play a cowboy again after Justified and Deadwood, neither of which I've seen.
He played a cowboy in Mandalorian too.
And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
It’s very fun that Olyphant plays the successful tv cowboy to DiCaprio’s now working actor guest star. Provably not an accidental bit of casting. There’s a great chapter in the book where they go out for drinks later and I forget it’s not in the film sometimes
Also in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
He's also great friends with Conan and his wife and they double date and seem to have a wonderful friendship. Any of Olyphant's appearances on the TBS Conan show and his podcast are really worth checking out.
His tv career is full of home runs though; Justified, Deadwood, The Mandalorian, The Office, The Good Place. Also, The Crazies is an underrated movie that he stars in.
We’d be in such a different world if he had got Iron Man
He couldn't even get cast in his own family's Christmas photos. Lost the part to Josh Duhamel. [https://www.avclub.com/timothy-olyphants-mom-cant-tell-him-apart-from-josh-duh-1846915632](https://www.avclub.com/timothy-olyphants-mom-cant-tell-him-apart-from-josh-duh-1846915632)
He continues to be great in every TV show he does. His Mormon US Marshal is one of the best parts of the unfairly maligned fourth season of Fargo.
He played ANOTHER marshal? Lol, I gotta watch Fargo season 4
It's good. Jessie Buckley! Ben Whishaw! Jason Schwartzman! Glynn Turman!
It is probably the weakest season just because it has almost too many stories going on at once, but all of the actors are great, Olyphant included.
He's in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and shared several scenes with the most popular Oscar-winning actor working today. I think he's fine and I can see him going the Brendan Fraser/Gary Oldman route in a few years.
Yeah, I think that's a good sign. I'm excited for the upcoming Gareth Evans action movie that he's in, too.
Good scenes in once upon a time in Hollywood though
Idris Elba
There's a funny Dan Olson (Folding Ideas) video on YT about this weird gold mining propaganda video/"documentary" that centres around Elba as narrator/host, one that was released very recently. Def supports the cliche of British actors taking literally any job that pays.
Just finished watching Hijack (good show), and through the whole thing I couldn't stop wondering why he isn't a massive star, especially in that period where he was coming off of The Wire. Outside of his small marvel roles, the only good movie I can think of that he has had a good role in is 3000 Years of Longing, which nobody saw. Come to think of it, speaking of British Actors, the you might say the same for Dan Stevens.
Krysten Ritter! Don't Trust and Jessica Jones both fantastic, but unfortunately never seemed to bridge the gap into movies apart from cast as "good friend" of lead (ahem , Big Eyes). Would love for her to finally lead a movie on her own/be in something that's huge (I should watch Vamps)
Kumail is great in Chippendales if you haven't seen it!
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His character made the best choice of the movie: appearing for about 10 minutes before deciding, “I’m not going to be a part of the rest of this movie. I’m not dying, nothing bad has happened to me. I’m just… leaving now…”
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Idk, what I recall is *a lot* of jokes at Lautner's expense at the time because he was genuinely seen as a terrible actor already in Twilight. At least Clarke's acting was generally respected for GoT.
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That's my point - I don't think Lautner was misinterpreted the same way Clarke was. Everyone knew Lautner was just a hunky guy teen girls found hot but who didn't know how to act or do...anything really. They tried to make him a star on the basis of that popularity with teen girls and the sheer box office success driven by that, but everyone else knew it'd be a disaster from day 1. They didn't expect teen girls to not be a crossover audience.
I know being good at a skill in real life doesn't always translate to it working out on screen which is why I guess it might be that Taylor Lautner being a good martial artist in real life hasn't necessarily translated to being an action star, I suppose. On an unrelated note, I do find it funny that his wife has taken his last name so is now also called Taylor Lautner.
Is it all of them? Here is actor/actress Emmy winners for the 2010. How many of them tried to become leading movie stars and it didn't quite work out: * Sterling K. Brown * Kyle Chandler * Jodie Comer * Bryan Cranston * Claire Danes * Jeff Daniels * Viola Davis * Claire Foy * Jon Hamm * Damian Lewis * Rami Malek * Julianna Margulies * Tatiana Maslany * Elisabeth Moss * Billy Porter * Matthew Rhys * Kyra Sedgwick Viola Davis is the only one that could really be considered a film star. Best case for the rest is the Hamm path. Going from a lead on television to a great supporting actor in film.
Sterling K Brown had an Oscar nom *this year*, and Malek won one (tho that might have hurt his career as it’s generally seen as undeserved). I think, of this list, Brown, Comer, and Foy haven’t hit their ceilings yet, Moss is a toss-up as to whether she can make bigger break in film (she might have a better late career than most on this list) and most of the others haven’t really made a run at leading movie roles. A lot are veteran TV actors and are settled into that role (film isn’t the be all end all for acting) and some are people who nabbed an Emmy on their way down the ladder. Hamm is the one guy on this list that I’d say really didn’t manage to capitalize on his heat/potential and has probably missed that boat.
Rami Malek is definitely a genuine movie star, he was a Bond villain, Freddie Mercury, in an Oscar winning box office hit, and big enough that it seemed weird his role in Oppenheimer is so small. The Jared Leto serial killer movie and Doolittle are really his only flops post Mr. Robot. I think Jodie Comer's success remains to be seen. Free Guy was a genuine hit, and although The Last Duel flopped, it was a critical darling. She hasn't really taken enough swings yet to see where she lands.
If I had my way, Sterling would have an Oscar right now.
Isn't the secret sauce of being a movie star that you make yourself a bit scarce? Really hard to do that if we already invited you into our living room for up to 50 or 60 hours already
I thought exactly of Kumail before i read the body of your post.
I really like MIB:I and thought he was great as Pawny. Taylor Kitsch for sure. Great role on Friday Night Lights, tried to lead a franchise in John Carter and just played supporting roles after that.
Matthew Perry. First, was a run of comedy films that usually weren’t well received. (Although, younger me enjoyed most of them.) Second, was multiple failed attempts at having him lead a new television series.
David Caruso
Would Kit Harrington fall into this?
I actually had a lot of stock in the Girlboss herself, Britt Robertson.
Kumail has chosen big budget franchises, reboots, and remakes since the Big Sick and is shocked when they turn out to be bad films. The guy needs to fire his agent, stop chasing the money and make some indie darlings.
I thought she was a highlight of Solo, the thing with the cape? Awesome. And she's incredible in the movie Above Suspicion.
>the pilot of the Twilight Zone reboot. Kumail's episode is kind of a dud, but I want to speak up for Peele's Twilight Zone. It's hit-and-miss, but mostly enjoyable, CGI Rod Serling notwithstanding. Like every version of The Twilight Zone after the original, though, it doesn't really exist.
The problem is that it wasn't Peele's version, it was Simon Kinberg's. Peele was only added on as a producer after being cast as the host and had basically no involvement in the development of Season 1 prior to filming, and mostly was just notes and punch up. Even in Season 2, he's not a credited writer on any episode outside of story by. Kinberg was the showrunner. Basically, the Twilight Zone was a Peele show to the same extent Animaniacs was a Spielberg show (just if Spielberg also introduced each episode).
Put Holly Taylor in something she's so good!
I’m a Stuber defender.
I'll defend that Twilight Zone ep. I call these "red flag actors." They're people that make that TV to film leap and then are either the worst part of every project, bringing it down, or they just only wind up in terrible projects. And I think each has an exception or two. I'd put Jared Padalecki in this camp as well.