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Wooden Actors

Film // Jim // 17th July 2004

Who are the most wooden actors about, and which wood do they actually resemble? Here are a few to get you started...

Nick Moran
Balsa Wood - lightweight, but cheap

Only seen him in a couple of things; Lock, Stock and a Pile of Mockney Toss and the film version of Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry. As detailed elsewhere on this site, very wooden indeed.

Also quite bad in those newspaper adverts.

Keanu Reeves
Birch - Shiny, dense

By all accounts a tremendously nice person, Reeves is unfortunately a painfully bad actor. So bad in fact that his greatest moments consist of playing himself (Bill and Ted) and spending an entire film looking a bit confused (The Matrix).

Anyone who has sat through any of his other films will have spent at least a minute or two feeling uncomfortably embarrassed. Probably the worst being the big budget version of Dracula, note to Francis Ford Coppolla, the audience shouldn’t be laughing that much in a horror film.

He really does know Kung Fu though.

Kevin Costner
Plywood - Versatile, thin

Do you need a bored looking man in your film, one for whom any expression seem like a colossal effort? Kevin may just be your man.

So colossally wooden in the otherwise great Untouchables that they gave Sean Connery an Oscar just for managing not to laugh at him. Who can forget his magnificent performance as one of the trees of Sherwood Forest in Robin Hood? You know, the one with the American accent stood next to Morgan Freeman for most of the film.

Rumour has it that he was cast in Waterworld specifically for his wooden qualities - they wanted to have a lead character that would definitely float.

In fairness Kev has had better moments such as Bull Durham and laid-back Clint Eastwood flick A Perfect World.

Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley
Pine - posh, difficult to work with

Dennis Pennis famously once asked Hugh Grant why he was so wooden, likening a recent Grant performance to that of a chair. “Oh, you can fuck off”, chuckled a retreating Grant seemingly showing at least some sense of humour, the one that has been singularly lacking from his entire film career. A succession of stiff, uptight english fops is his legacy to the world of cinema. Even after getting caught getting blown by a pro in Hollywood he has managed to retain this image and continue doing the same role over and over, albeit it with a slightly more butch hairstyle.

Hugh’s ex, Liz Hurley is (quite rightly) most famously remembered for not quite wearing a dress. Her acting is so bad it could turn milk to yoghurt. Anyone who have seen My Favourite Martian or Bedazzled will quite possibly never forgive her.

Roger Moore
Mahogany - Impervious, Not that fashionable any more

A wooden acting legend, the man who can express any emotion by subtly shifting an eyebrow and mumbling a filthy double-entendre in a plummy voice.

Female screaming heroine: “Roger, the Dam has burst, this whole area will be under water in two minutes!! How will we ever defuse this atomic bomb in time??!!!”
Roger: “Calm down my dear, are you worried about [Pause while eyebrow raises slightly and voice drops an octave] getting wet? ...... Or are you more concerned about [pause, more eyebrow movement, voice hitting the lower registers of human hearing] a big bang?”

George Lazenby was derided for his rigid performance as James Bond. In his defense he was a male model dropped in the deep end and at least he managed some tears at the end. Hard to imagine Moore conjuring up a similar outburst, imagine the state it could have made of his safari suit.

Arnie
Oak - Thick, often oiled.

Some people were disturbed when Arnie won the race to become governor of California, the first stop on his relentless journey to teutonic overlord of the human race. I personally was delighted as it means that he won’t be polluting the zeitgeist with any more of his universally appalling acting.

In ten years time we may all be in forced labour camps doing bicep curls and drinking protein shakes at gunpoint, but at least we won’t have to sit through Kindergarten Cop 2.

Admittedly he was OK in The Terminator, but he just had to look hard and not say anything, Wolf out of Gladiators could have done that, probably.

The stream of shit action films, shit comedies and shit action-comedies that followed proved that you didn’t need any talent at all to make it as a hollywood star, just endless self belief and important friends - a real triumph of the will.

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The Razzies

Home of the Golden Raspberry awards, like the oscars for bad films and actors