The Worst Male Film Performances Of All Time

Ghjk

stallone -stop or my mom will shoot :) ,arnold in junior ... cmon guys this is sick..

Tim

Anything the horrible Matt Damon has ever done or will. Goes for his wife, Ben Affleck, also.

Army_nurse70

Anything Adam Sandler did after Little Nicky. Especially Spanglish.How about Michael Keaton in Batman? Or Tobey Maguire as Spiderman?

Mick

Willem Dafoe in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, which is a truly rotten movie of a great novel. But Dafoe's "Gad, Gad" when he's on the cross makes us all realize that Jesus was from Rhode Island.

Nicestdionysus

No Keanu? I guess being cute buys you favor. His worst: DRACULARod Steiger in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (Oh, it's his MOMMY DEAREST)The mother of them all:Jared Leto in that painful movie about John Hinckley

timmmyk

Steve Guttenberg in one of my fave awful flicks, 'Can't Stop The Music.'

CMG

Robert Duvall in Newsies. He played Joseph Pulitzer in the hybrid of Olivier in The Jazz Singer and a Thomas Nast cartoon in an otherwise, while cheesy, very serious 'issue' musical.

Scruff712

al pacino in scent of a woman

Jack M

Any performance by Gerard Depardieu. I just don't get the French fascination with him. Deadly dull!

Abel

Sir Laurence Olivier explained himself on several occasions: he made trash like The Betsy for the money. He had a new family in his later years, and a need to squirrel away as much money as he could, particularly in light of England's punitive tax rates. Can you blame him? Art is wonderful, but the bills must be paid.

Parcheesi

Well, all the nominees can say "I did it for the money." So what? We still see trash on screen and we evaluate it as such.

bsomers

Richard Burton in "The Klansman"

FTW

Jack Lemmon in anything...he always played a pathetic,cringing whiner exactly the same way whether he was supposed to be Ensign Pulver,James Tyrone or "Machine" Levine...he ruins any movie for me...

F. Packer

Hold on, "Over the Top" was fucking Rashomon compared to "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!"

Movielover

I don't like John Wayne and hate his movies. I like Elvis and hate his movies. Except for Viva Las Vegas, and that's because Ann Margaret was so good in it!

mjm

you don't like John Wayne movies?!?! rent 'Stagecoach' now!

Gregorama

I agree with mjm's mention of John Wayne in "The Conqueror". His performance is definitely wrenched from the same inner void that he used to create his performance in "The Greatest Story Ever Told". What the hell happened, from about 1954 to about 1964, where everyone in "epic" films started speaking in this bizarre DeMillian-PseudoBibleBabble? In "The Conqueror," he portrays the Asian Genghis Khan by changing his usual deadpan delivery not a BIT! If you haven't been subjected to this monstrosity, imagine this line delivered by John Wayne:

"Come and take me, mongrels - if you dare. While I have fingers to grasp a sword, and eyes to see your cowardly faces, your treacherous heads will not be safe on your shoulders. For I am Temujin, the Conqueror. No prison can hold me, no army defeat me"....

Or this: "I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her. There are moments for wisdom and moments when I listen to my blood; my blood says, take this Tartar woman".

Ergo, this is for me not only the WORST male performance in film history, it's also a very strong contender the WORST FILM ever made. Also, bonus points for hatefulness is that the film actually KILLED a large percentage of the cast and crew! It was filmed in the deserts of Nevada, where the soil was contaminated by recent nuclear tests. John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead (the three lead characters), as well as director, Dick Powell, all later died of various forms of cancer (as well as an estimated 41% of the rest of the cast/crew).

Rickster Rickster

i saw the betsy when it opened in theatres. sir lawrence was superb. i would have chosen either dracula, inchon or the jazz singer as his worst performance.

mjm

totally forgot about Inchon, the Battlefield Earth of the '80s (it was funded by the Moonies, which I'm sure Olivier had no clue about)-and of all of Christopher Walken's worst performances, his worst is Balls of Fury ('07) as a Fu Manchu/Mr. Miyagi hibrid-Nic Cage's last few movies were pretty awful

timmmyk

Actually Battlefield Earth was funded by Co$ - I knew a few of the cast. One of the idiots 'acting' in the POS could barely contain his assholery under a face shield while gurgling out his only line of drivel. (They unsuccessfully tried to recruit me in the 80's)

Melinda9

But Balls of Fury is supposed to be silly.

mjm

it's a ripoff of 'Dodgeball', which I liked (but Ben Stiller i can't stand)

mjm

Travolta wins this, hands down.

my honorable mentions:-Tom Cruise in anything-Burt Reynolds in anything-Ashton Kutcher in anything-Ryan Reynolds in anything-Bradley Cooper in anything-Zac Efron in anything-Matthew McConaughey in anything-Ahnuld Schwarzenegger in anything-Marlon Brando in Candy ('68) whose tagline was 'GOOD GRIEF IT'S CANDY!'-Laurence Olivier in The Jazz Singer ('80) (Lord Olivier in a Neil Diamond-Lucie Arnaz movie?!?!!)-James Mason in Mandingo ('75)-all of the male castmembers in the Twilight movies, who apparently have had no acting lessons-John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conquerer ('56) -Charles Laughton in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd ('52) [did he have to stoop this low?]-Orson Welles as a voice over in the original Transformers movie ('86)-Burt Lancaster in The Island of Dr. Moreau ('77)-Jack Nicholson in Goin' South ('78)-Kirk Douglas in Saturn 3 ('80)