Danny Dyer - the "Nuts" generation's Marlon Brando -taking Cockernee Geezerdom to a place BEYOND method..where he is and forever shall be a touchstone of incandescent naffness.
Seth Rogen and that sweary git out of Superbad -the same fat stoner blokes in ALL of their films. Judd Apatow has a lot to answer for.
We could also throw in Sean William Scott - same "jock" in every movie he's made.
Can I mention ALL of the cast of "Grey's Anatomy"? Makes "Holby City" look like Chekov.
I can't comment on the members of various rep companies that make up the casts of the soaps, 'cos I don't watch them.
Horne and Corden - charmless nurks as iTunes FREE download of "Lesbian Vampire Killers" demonstrated.
Although I was mesmerised by her bottom in "Eyes Wide Shut" I think Nicole
Kidman has voyaged into the realm of the unwatchable under the mentorship of Baz L.
Orlando Bloom's a bit wet and will NEVER make a leading man..as "Kingdom Of Heaven" aptly demonstrated.
Shia La Beef / Megan Fox = the Transformers were better.

has there been a more wooden actor in television history, apart from the guy who played Pete Beale in Eastenders?

and she said it was virtually impossible to give a good performance. No rehearsal time and deliberately bland scripts is a toxic mix.

Aside from Bill & Ted, where he was basically playing himself.
I'm not sure what he's got, he seems charisma & talent free to me - I'm told The Matrix movies are good, and that he has improved with age, but his name in a cast list generally ensures that I don't watch. If anyone can name a recent watchable movie of his, I'd be willing to review my position.

After having seen her again on the Victoria Wood special last week I nominate Julie Waters. I'll accept that it may just be comedy acting that she does badly but most of what she does with Victoria Wood is painful.

He's the same character in every film. And that character is Michael Caine.

until I saw Hannah and Her Sisters. He's so good in that, I don't care if it's familiar territory.

Familiar target but Keira is delicately carved mahogany in all of the tripe she has been involved with.

Nettles is indeed inert which is an achievement given the regular cast of overbaked hams on display in Midsomer.

That Sam Rockwell fell into this category But then I saw moon and realized I was wrong, very wrong.

Cage

Somebody really needs to sit me down and explain how this guy gets to call himself an actor. I mean he even makes Julian Sands look like a seasoned pro (as opposed to his normal state of seasoned hardwood).

A bigger plank of wood never walked the earth. That silly, strangulated voice. He gets by on looks alone. Have you seen Croupier? It's laughable.

Freema Agyeman. Give it up, love.

Ciaran Hinds. Britain's biggest ham.

rubbish!

Are we considering Madonna to be an actor/actress in the first place?

If we are I would like to nominate her. Not so swept away by her.

As usual...

Cheap shot I know as clearly he was never an actor, but his appearances on film were stinkers.

I always remember a review of a Liz Hurley film where they made the comment that she is so hopeless she can't even walk convincingly.

Terribly stiff and flat as Bond. He managed to make all those awful puns and jokes in the scripts even worse.

Then he moved on and developed that ridiculous 'sh' lisp. Which drives me to the off switch within seconds of hearing it.

Why won't he at least attempt accents? An Egyptian/Spanish immortal with a Scottish accent called 'Ramirej' (Ramirez) in Highlander anyone?

I'd much rather ANY actor gave a good performance in their own accent than some cringeworthy "Vee hav vays of making you talk.." effort. I watched Amadeus over the Christmas, and there was no attempt by any actor to hide their Californian/English accent. Funny that.

Oh, bad actors..... Mark Harmon (The Presidio, NCIS)

I would ague that a lot of the actors mentioned have turned in great performances in lesser seen films, and that it sometimes takes a great director to realise an actor's potential.
Nicolas Cage for example has been incredibly bad in countless big blockbusters e.g. Knowing, The Wicker Man etc.. Yet when working with the likes of David Lynch in Wild At Heart he can be incredibly good. The same goes for Mark Wahlberg, who is outstanding in Boogie Nights, but for the majority of his career has been stuck with the lead role in big dumb action films, a role in which he seems to struggle.

I suppose he was pretty good in Trainspotting and Big Fish, but other than that, maybe his choice of roles has been the problem. He just isn't believable to me. It's a pity because when interviewed he always seems like a really likeable person.

acts like she only went up for the part as a laugh and now can't believe she's got it.

Can't believe nobody's mentioned our Tom,truly bloody awful in every thing he's done except maybe Magnolia,a statistical blip perhaps.Jessica Alba,two expressions,slightly puzzled and gormless plus a pout.Scarlett Johansson,so pale you can see right through her.David what's his name,played and I use the term played advisedly,Angel,a wardrobe with hair,when he appears it's like someone's thrown a plank onto the set.Vinnie Jones oh dear.What's next Gazza in a remake of Dirty Harry,pet.

Sylvester Stallone - redefined wooden
Charles Bronson - removed the acting part from the job altogether
Roger Moore - perma-smirking pretty boy

Nicholas Cage, while truly awful, doesn't really achieve these levels of tripe....

No mentions of Stephen Seagal and Jean-CLaude Vann Damm so far. Odd.

Daniel Craig at least looks like he'd be a dangerous individual. And Connery has charm by the bucket.

Not all actors per se but they took the money and have equity cards so they are fair game.
1) Mike Holoway- From The Tomorrow People. So Wooden he once played a set of Goalposts in Grange Hill and one for patrick,wait till you see him play Zach Zola in Minder.
2) David Essex- even in That'll be the Day,you can see the wood despite the trees.
3)Anyone involved with Eldorado.
4)Alex Casanovas, A Catalan actor who has one expression and never knows which camera to look at.. He once hosted a TV masterclass on Acting. Not available on YouTube or DVD.
5)Robin Askwith-Another who played himself and couldn't do that well.

, especially regarding Nic Cage, complete and utter bollox. Been rewatching Deadwood recently. Great performances but Powers Booth's turn as Cy Tolliver stinks up the place. Just awful.
How about the goddawful Renee Zellweger and Sandra bloody Bullock

..but some of those mentioned occasionally pull a decent performance out of nowhere.For what it's worth I think Nic did a good turn as "Hi" in Raising Arizona,and Stallone(who's films I usually avoid) pleasantly surprised as "Freddie" in Copland.

I seem to remember a chap from Eastenders saying that the acting audition consisted of just a chat, in order to see how much the 'actor' was like the envisaged character. Working six days a week - using scripts that are knocked off daily with a eye on ratings - isn't going to allow for much method acting or nuanced delivery.

I've never agreed with the idea that soaps are inherently evil, as some of the writing in Corrie, for example, is brilliant, when you consider that it's not taking months to write an hour of dialogue: it's churned out to order.

For what it's worth, the type of actors who make me vomit are the ones who talk about their characters 'going on a journey', and speak about them as if they were real people.

But what actually defines a good actor? While it's easy to spot the difference between the Beatles and that git with his guitar in your local, there surely isn't a chasm of difference in talent between Hugh Grant and the bloke who plays Phil in 'Enders. Al Pacino is considered, by some, to ge the greatest actor of his generation; to me, he just shouts a lot. Conversely, Ian Hart convincingly played John Lennon and Dr. Watson, and he's never going to win an oscar.

R Gere - the most over rated Hollywood A-lister in history. He has just two expressions: happiness and being pissed off. When he's portraying the second he does that thing where he stands still for a second and closes his eyes. fugging useless!

Mel Gibson - loved the movie overall but his performance in Braveheart was so camped up. That bit when he's talking tough to the English Commander "everyone of you will die today (delivered in Austral-ottish)". oh my god. hammed up or what?

to be themselves, surely?

Have you ever seen anything even approaching a watchable performance in River City? I assume this isn't shown south of the border.

SHOUTINGG ISN'T AAACTING! BUT I STILLLL LIKE HIIM! And Kenneth More couldn't play anyone with two legs.

the distinction between actors and movie stars. A movie star is hired to be the same in every movie; Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart. An actor needs to be more versatile; Robert Duvall, Tilda Swinton.

I think we invent this distinction to make ourselves feel better. I think Humphrey Bogart was just as good an actor as, say, Robert Duvall is. What changed in the Fifties was the arrival of a different acting style. Before Brando/Dean/Strasberg, mainstream movie stars tended to be far more stylised, and not really concerned with moments of naturalism. Yet what James Stewart does in Vertigo, say, or what Bogart does in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre is certainly acting in my book. However, once naturalism became the norm, we as audiences started to judges actors not on their charisma, command or screen presence - or even on their subtle depictions of character - but on whether or not we believed it. I think this is a rather damaging way to look at something creative; and I won't repeat my reality TV/rats' brains rant from a few weeks ago.

Orson Welles put it rather well in an interview he gave some years back. He maintained that the greatest screen actor of all was James Cagney: to look at him, he could often seem way over the top and utterly theatrical. But, not only do you buy everything he does on film, there was a truth - as opposed to realism - about everything that he did.

Try this at about 1.10:

So wooden that in our household we say that he went to the Arnold Laver School of Acting (Lavers being the local timber merchant).

Cafe owner Ali.
Pete Beale.
Ian Beale.

Mark Fowler AKA Todd Carty:

Girlfriend of Mark - "Are you angry Mark?"
"Yes! I AM angry!"
"Who are you angry with?"
(Mark raises fist, flares nostrils) "Everyone!"

...long pause...

Mark (drops head) "No-one."

dum dum d-d-d-dum ...

any film with Nicholas Caage in, he is pure cack

I guess he's made some bad films but to be honest, I've steered clear of them.

His good films, though? Wow. Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas, The Rock, Con Air, Bringing out the Dead, Face/Off. I liked Matchstick Men and Lord of War, too. In fact the only film of his I've seen that I didn't like was Adaptation.

And it's been well over twenty years since I saw it, but wasn't he pretty good in Birdy?

Gerard Butler. It's worth going to see Law Abiding Citizen just to see how bad he can be. Appalling, truly appalling.

The ultimate one trick pony. Dunno if it's bad scripts, lousy casting or just her Innate solipsism but she's done nothing of merit since "Friends'.

Not a fan but thought she was OK in (if I'm remembering correctly) She's The One.Was that what it was called? Ed Burns re-visitng Brothers McMullen territory,but I liked it.

There are far worse than her out there, plus she will always be typecast after being so successful.

Every Loser Wins hit maker, Wicksy in EastEnders and something similar in Heartbeat & Harbour Lights.

So wooden, that Sting ran a campaign to save the forests that were used to build Nick Berry. There was also a scurrilous rumour floating around that all Nick Berry's parts had to have "ick" in part of the characters name so Mr Berry would not be confused when reading the script. I have no idea whether this would be true.

A truly awful actor. He did momentarily appear to have the ability to act (eg: Tombstone), but then normal service resumed.

Tombstone was actually very good when you consider the cast - Jason Priestley, Billy Zane, Kurt Russell, Harry Connick Jnr, Michael Rooker etc etc

It should have been dire!

A major ham. Talk about overacting. I laughed when he won that Oscar. It was a performance that wouldn't have been out of place in Jason & The Argonauts.

He's okay in other stuff though, if a little intense. He thinks he's Brando.

From the BBC back in 1985. It's the first thing I remember watching where the acting seemed so bad - I was a fairly uncritical viewer up to that point. The late Maurice Colbourne stands out in my memory as being the most plank like, but there was plenty of competition.

I agree with Five-Centres, Russell Crowe is painful to watch/listen to in movies and interviews. The guy is under the illusion he's the most important actor that ever walked the planet. Can't wait to see his portrayal of Robin Hood (NOT). Maybe they should cast him in a remake of The Ego Has Landed.

is bloody good in L.A. Confidential and The Insider.

atrocity ever committed on film. He was clearly too big a jerk to play the character's weaknesses, so instead just insensitively bulldozed over them and played him as confident great guy.

For example: In the book the character reveals his spying room to the Sharon Stone character. He is very, very nervous about her reaction. Will she think he's a pervert, a weirdo etc? In the film he casually mentions, "Oh by the way, I'm a massive pervert who films my tenants. Go in there and look at my screens", then turns away to continue doing whatever it is he's doing without any trace of concern or tension about how she will react.

anyone mentioned de niro yet? i'll give him mean streets and the king of comedy but as for the rest (including his supposedly great roles; taxi driver, goodfellas, raging bull, casino) he just plays this one dimensional cut out and keep character - utterly unconvincing in almost everything and as for being the best actor of his generation? he makes al pacino look subtle! so he put on 20 stone for raging bull and got a six pack for cape fear? gimmicks! give me brian dennehy any day

Almost leapt to his defence there citing Midnite Run in support of my arguement.However before I touched a key the realisation dawned that Charles Grodin and most of the other "supporting" actors made the film what it is.And i never liked Mean Streets either.

Have just got round to watching my recordings of this 3 prt TV drama. Kelly Reilly is a handsome looking woman, and maybe it's the way it's written, but she plays the part of DC Travis with an emotional range that doesn't even quite run from A to B. Sadly the rest of the cast are little better - straight out of the "Spooks / Hermione Norris - I'm scowling beacuase it's serious" book of acting. Shame really as she was quite good in Cold Feet

I can never tell whether Nicholas Cage is a bad actor, or I'm just being too distracted by his chosen hairpiece to notice...

between bad actors (Reeves, Richard "blinking" Gere and the bland non-entity talent vacuum that is Chad Michael Murray from One Tree Hill)
and actors that are the same in every film.

All actors have mannerisms that follow them from film to film even great ones. In fact the only actor I can think of that doesn't is Daniel Day Lewis. I recognised nothing of his previous performances in his mesmeric madmen in "Gangs Of New York" and "There Will Be Blood". All actors are puppets otherwise...

David Hasselhof, Lee Majors and Lindsay Anderson. Each one like John Wayne on mogadons.