WHY is Al Pacino so respected for shouting and Robert De Niro feted for mumbling? Here are some other screen icons who are annoyingly overrated:
Al Pacino
Al Pacino doesn’t act, he yells. He’s been in some cracking films, but you know he’s always going to lose his shit and spend the last third of it shouting his head off. That’s his method. Does screaming so much that your eyes bulge out make for a great performance? Maybe in a couple of movies, but surely not all of them need him to resemble an angry Fraggle.
Kristen Stewart
Twilight has a lot to answer for, such as releasing an avalanche of supernatural dross onto the cultural landscape, and also being responsible for the perplexing longevity of Kristen Stewart’s career. Nobody can recall a film she’s been in since – apart from the weird one about Princess Diana – and yet she’s still incredibly famous. Why?
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro spent the first half of his career mumbling his way through gangster movies and the second half appearing in unwatchable nonsense like Meet The Fockers. He also starred in a Warburtons advert which tells us everything we need to know about the creative depths he’s prepared to sink to for money. Although even that wasn’t as appalling as Dirty Grandpa.
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks seems like a great guy, but did you ever see a Tom Hanks film where Tom Hanks didn’t play Tom Hanks? From The Money Pit right up to A Man Called Otto he has been exactly the same character. The only slight aberration was when he was Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis, and even then you could see the incredibly pleasant man trying to escape from behind the nasty latex face.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Is she a talented actor or are the lower classes of British society just conditioned to think so because she’s really f**king posh? Was breaking the fourth wall an ingenious innovation or have we forgotten that Miranda Hart did it years before? Was the second series of Fleabag really good simply because Andrew Scott was in it? Hard to say, but Indiana Jones and the Dial of Disappointment suggests ‘yes’.