The quality of an actor's work on-screen might be a matter of opinion most of the time, but
there are some performances so awful that all subjectivity goes out the window.
In the case of these scenes, the acting is so over-the-top and bizarre that it's hard
not to laugh at them, even years after the fact.
Talk about sucking
Just about everyone involved in the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance could
be accused of phoning it in, but Twilight’s MVP Kristen Stewart takes top honors for worst
performance in the movie's climactic scene.
It all starts when a trio of nomadic vamps lurk around, looking for something to eat
when they stumble across the Cullen clan playing baseball while their protected human pet watches
on.
A standoff ensues and almost ends peacefully — before James catches a whiff of Bella
gets the munchies.
"You brought a snack."
The situation is diffused, but not done.
James, the tracker vampire, vows to hunt her down and eat her.
Despite the Cullens' best efforts to hide her, he lures her away from the Cullens and
savagely snaps her leg.
Bella's sparkly vampire boyfriend Edward arrives to save her from certain death, but James
still manages to sink his teeth into her arm.
The venom from his bite starts to spread through her veins right away, which is when she informed
everyone:
"Oh, no, no, no, my hand is BURNING!
In Meyer’s book, the pain is described as, quote, "exquisite," but watching Stewart’s
grunting and grimacing in the moment makes those tiny teeth marks look anything but.
The nose knows
Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age classic Dazed and Confused gave us the gift of many
quotable Matthew McConaughey moments …
"You just gotta keep livin' man.
L-I-V-I-N."
But it's also responsible for the unbearable nuisance of Mitch Kramer.
The goober freshman is a categorical case study in social awkwardness, so there's some
lack of screen savvy to be expected from his portrayal.
But in the scene where he’s trying to flirt with Sabrina outside the Emporium, it's full-tilt
amateur hour.
Instead of coming out with traditional acting devices like facial expressions, vocal inflection,
or pure presence, actor Wiley Wiggins relied on eight — yes eight — cringe-worthy nose
...and one super clumsy elbow nudge to coast through the scene.
Linklater eventually accepted responsibility for letting this bad bit slip through the
editing racks, telling the Daily Beast, "I just thought [the nose grab] was kind of an
awkward gesture.
I’m the director, so it’s on me!
That’s a thing people only notice if it’s the third time you watch it.
I just thought it was that young, awkward man kind of thing.
Maybe it was one or two too many."
When it comes to removing a few of those nose-grabs, maybe on a remastered cut of the movie, well…
"It'd be a lot cooler if you did."
Pass the turkey
Considering Gigli is a movie whose 6% Rotten Tomatoes score is probably a little generous,
there are a lot of awful aspects to choose from.
"You know something?
You're right.
It's sad.
It's sadness, and I'm f---ing sad."
The stupidity of this thing extends all the way up to the title itself, so it’s a tall
order to pick just one scene as the worst of the worst.
Since Gigli was such a turkey at the box office, though, it makes sense to focus on the scene
that tried — and failed, miserably — to make Thanksgiving-themed cuisine a workable
piece of sexy dialogue.
In the movie, Jennifer Lopez plays a lesbian named Ricki who decides to make a Ben Affleck's
hitman her boytoy and invites him into her bed.
Like so:
"It's turkey time …"
"Huh?"
"Gobble gobble."
That's when everyone watching this movie did this:
The turkey talk is an evergreen highlight for both Ben and Jen's career blooper reels,
even though they've tried to put the picture into perspective ever since.
"There's worse movies than Gigli out there."
The empty box
With all due respect to Brad Pitt, his performance in Seven is a classic case of an actor completely
missing the emotional mark of an important movie moment.
Instead of delivering on what might've been a powerful scene, he made a bit of a mockery
of himself.
To be fair to Pitt, he was working with three industry giants — director David Fincher
and actors Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman — while he was still something of a Hollywood
newcomer at the time.
But compared to everyone else’s delivery in the "wrath" scene, his contribution is
pretty inexcusable.
In the grand finale of John Doe’s deadly sins-inspired plan, Kevin Spacey’s killer
character leads the detective duo out to the desert to find a package containing … something.
Freeman's character gets a gander at it first and his face dutifully reflects the grim reality
of the situation.
We're led to believe it’s the head of Mills’ pregnant wife Tracy, an innocent and lovely
lady who has nothing to do with any of this mess, but we never get to see the contents.
The tension is staggering...until Pitt starts screaming his lines and jumping around like
a carnival clown.
"Show you what was in the box what was in the boxxxx?"
"AHHH what's in the boxxxxxx" through "what's in the f---in' box!"
It’s a scene-ruiner upon rewatching it.
Looking back, you might be tempted to believe it was secretly Pitt’s talent that was actually
hidden in the box.
Those bloody wolves
If Keanu Reeves could really take a Bill and Ted-style journey back in time, we hope he’d
at least consider returning to the early '90s and undoing everything he did in Bram Stoker’s
Dracula.
At the very least, he should retroactively hire himself a proper dialect coach because
his British accent is so horrible that it actually distracts viewers from fixating on
Gary Oldman’s giant butt wig, which is quite a feat.
In one scene in particular, Reeves’ character starts to realize that the Count is bad news
and delivers a recap of his Transylvanian adventures that's way funnier than it's supposed
to be.
"I’ve seen many strange things already—bloody wolves chasing me through some blue inferno."
Even director Francis Ford Coppola, who’s practically president of the Keanu Reeves
Fan Club, had to admit to Entertainment Weekly, "it was tough for him to affect an English
accent.
He tried so hard.
That was the problem, actually — he wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it
perfectly, it came off as stilted."
In other words ...
"I doubted everything even my mind.
I was impotent with fear."
The fumble
1999 presented two major movie moments depicting sons rejecting their stodgy old dads’ wishes
for them to follow in their footsteps.
And one of those things was not like the other.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s breakthrough performance as Homer Hickam in October Sky features him
standing up to the status quo of going to the mine shaft after school with his dad.
Instead he literally reaches for the sky as a wannabe space cadet who built rockets on
the sly.
It builds to a poignant moment of father-son friction that totally resonates the way it
should.
"Coal-mining's your life.
It's not mine."
Compare that to James Van Der Beek’s showdown with his own pop in Varsity Blues, which hit
theaters a few weeks before.
In the movie, Van Der Beek plays a backup high school quarterback named Mox who's hiked
his way to the starting squad after an injury takes out the team’s original star.
Somehow this ignites some long-held dream his dad has for Mox to become the star player.
But Mox has no such ambitions and tells him as much… in the most exaggerated and terrible
accent imaginable.
"Playing football in West Canaan may have been the opportunity of your lifetime, but
I don't want your life."
It's hard to tell whether it's the dull delivery tone or the lines themselves that make this
such a dud, but he gets no points for that scene.
Green bobblin'
James Franco made a jump to the blockbuster A-list with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy,
but it’s also a regular go-to source for some of his most accidentally lousy acting
moments.
His character spends the first sequel desperately seeking the web-slinging vigilante who he
believes killed his dad in the first film.
And when he lifts the mask to reveal Spidey's identity, he discovers his best friend Peter
Parker is his new worst enemy.
"Pete…
No, it can't be."
Franco’s slack-jawed gape and awkward footwork is only exceeded in badness by his whispered
threats about getting payback.
"If only I could cause you the pain that you've caused me."
The whole thing adds up to a scene more cartoonish than the comics it was based on.
Rain rain go away
Andie MacDowell never quite lived up to the promise she displayed in movies from the late-80s
and early '90s.
Maybe it was because of her wooden performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
"I don't usually skulk a lot but I suppose I could skulk if skulking were required."
Although the film is otherwise moderately charming, there's one scene that tends to
ruin it on every re-watch.
At the end of the movie, in the pouring rain, Hugh Grant delivers one of those classic,
sappy "It was you all along" speeches to McDowell, but his monologue is interrupted by one very
pointless observation:
"Is it still raining?
I hadn't noticed."
There's so little emotion in the moment from MacDowell that it's almost as if she were
the funeral featured in the film's title.
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