T here is, it’s fair to say, nothing more important to the movies than actors. The right performance can tip a film into the realm of greatness; a bad one can doom an otherwise promising project to mediocrity or ridicule. What would There Will Be Blood be without Daniel Day-Lewis at its centre? Would The Godfather still sparkle without Al Pacino and Marlon Brando? These are not questions anyone is keen to know the answer to.
The best performances are irreplaceable; they are key to the very essence of cinema. But what happens when one good performance isn’t enough to save a film? When a terrific performance is wasted on a substandard story? From Anthony Hopkins to Leonardo DiCaprio, many of the finest actors working today have lent their talents to inferior projects. Sometimes they simply phone it in, but other times, they manage to shine despite the material.
Here’s The Independent ’s list of 23 secretly brilliant performances in bad films...
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – Along Came Polly (2004) The late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman was that rarest of things; an actor who brought depth to even the flimsiest of roles, from The Hunger Games ’ Plutarch Heavensby to Mission: Impossible III ’s villainous Owen Davian. The critically lambasted romcom Along Came Polly may be the best example of this, however, as Hoffman delivering a coruscating comic turn that stole not just a scene but the whole film from under Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston’s noses. Margot Robbie �.