Hammiest actors

Shatner doesn't belong on your list OP. He doesn't take himself serious like the other four.

De Niro

Tom Hardy

DiCaprio

Al Pacino

Mandy Patinkin

Weirdly enough, Laurence Olivier was a big hambone most of the time. The right director could reign him in to get a great screen performance from him (like William Wyler in Wuthering Heights), but most of the time on screen he overdid it.

Same thing is true for Katharine Hepburn, who would overplay her hand too often enough.

Joan Collins, of course.

I second, Katherine Hepburn.

Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, Jeremy Irons - De Niro and Pacino got hammy in their old age - these three have always been scenery chewers.

Miriam Hopkins. She must've loved the tastes of cardboard and plywood.

Martin Landau. Uta and Lee have much to answer for.

Kenneth Branagh

Oliver Reed - king of all hambones.

Jessica Lange

R7 ditto Jack Lemmon.

Chris Hemsworth.

Kirk Douglas

Surprised no one's said Travolta.

I second Jack Lemmon. That screen persona never changed in 50 years. The "exasperated, boyish and loveable..even-when-being-a-jerk everyman." He surpassed it in a few roles (i.e. The Days of Wine and Roses and Save the Tiger) but most of the time he ate up everything and everyone on screen.

on stage - Christian Borle - "Peter and the Starcatchers" called for a hammy performance, but this was beyond pork and bacon

Miss Piggy

Porky Pig

Kevin Bacon

Jon Hamm

Richard Dreyfus

Elisabeth Moss

Miranda Richardson? Where did that come from? She has delivered some very quietly nuanced performances over the years.

Oh honey, no. She was so over the top in her big final scenes in "Damage" and "Sleepy Hollow" she could have chewed up the cameras.

Geoffrey Rush

R7, Wyler also directed him in "Carrie" (1951), in a remarkable performance. Just about his best film role.

I WAS going to say Jon Hamm(y) and John Revolting too. But, not all of their acting has been hammy.

When she was in drama school Judi Dench was known as Judi Dentures cos she kept chewing up the scenery!

It's true!

David Caruso

I blame Miranda’s overacting her final scene in Sleepy Hollow squarely on Tim Burton.

He not only allowed it to happen, but encouraged it.

Once again, it seems like Burton started shooting a film he had yet to finish writing (writing well, anyway) - and when the time inevitably came to wrap things up, he was short on time and content.

Burton always fills the many and huge gaps in his storytelling with the actor having to do all the heavy lifting by spewing dump trucks of over-acted explanation as the cows come home.

I can just picture Troubled Timmy with his take on the cliched director’s outfit of jodhpurs made of an orangutan hide, a roadkill skunk as beret, shouting his creep-flick version of the sitcom trope, “LOUDER, FASTER, FUNNIER!” through a perpetually astonished pufferfish megaphone.

Sometimes hamminess was a key part of the greatness of actors like Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, and Shelley Winters. They had so much obvious and infectious fun being over the top that, in the right roles, they were doing things no one else could do, knocking it right out of the park. See "Advise and Consent", "The Immortal Story", and "Lolita".

Fiona Shaw

Rod Steiger. Claire Bloom was married to him, AS WELL AS to Philip Roth.

33 posts and no one said the obvious?

Winona Ryder in Stranger Things. She was awful.

All Scientologists must go to the same acting teachers. Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Will Smith and on and on definitely are over the top ridiculous.

[quote]All Scientologists must go to the same acting teachers. Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Will Smith and on and on definitely are over the top ridiculous.

they may be overcompensating for something else

De Niro

R6 wins the thread.

Margot Robbie

Tom Hardy

Fassbender

DiCaprio

Christian Bale

Faye Dunaway!

Brad Pitt

Jack Nicholson. Peter O’toole. Johnny Depp. Mel Gibson. Meryl Streep.

R23, is correct. Miranda Richardson is terrific.

They all have to work with the script they are handed, as well as the supporting cast, the director, etc., Richardson's work in DAMAGED was stunning. Not over the top. The script might be over the top, but that is what she was given to play. They don't write these scenes themselves. Most of the time.

Robin Williams, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson in almost every performance they made.

Steve Martin is unbearable. He manages to be hammy even when doing comedy.

Benedict Cumberbatch. Especially in Patrick Melrose Which despite the histrionics is a really good show.

To be fair, most good actors veer toward hammy, as it is much easier to tone things down than to drive things up in a performance, trained stage actors are particularly inclined toward this as stage performance is inherenly bigger. it's the director's job to help an actor to modulate their performance. Pretty much every great actor has put out at least one performance that is over the top. The problem seems to be that as they get older and have cemented their 'legendary' status, directors are less inclined to call them out on it.

The hammiest of all the hams in hamville, Paul Giamatti.

If an actor is hammy in a role, you must assume that this is the way the director wanted it. Otherwise, the scene would re-shot until the director got what s/he wanted.

That works both ways. The director could be reshooting until the performance was as big as demanded, or as small. Actors are often the victims of bad directors.

Laurence Olivier far above all the others

Some "honorable" mentions include Tom Cruise

Sylvester Stallone

Robin Williams

Bette Davis

Isabelle Adjani

Nicholas Cage

[quote]Robin Williams, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson

Agree on Pacino and Nicholson but not Williams

Nathan Lane

Gracie Allen

Gale Gordon AKA Mr. Moody

Corabeth Godsey

Beth "please do not inform my fans of my mortality " Howland

Annette Fabray in ODAAT

Sherry Lewis and the hand sock

The Skipper on GI

Everyone except the hunky Hagman On IDOJ.

THE FONZ

Victoria Principal AKA Pam Ewing

Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending

William Shatner

Will Smith

Anthony Hopkins

Tommy Lee Jones

Bette Midler. Case in point....

In case you were wondering, the opening monologue isn't supposed to inspire guffaws.

Vincent d'onofrio (I do like him though)

Al "Il Guido" Pacino.

Denzel Washington

Cumberbatch. Big time.

Poor Bette. Consummate performer, for sure. But I can't even label her a hammy actor, because she never gets as far as actually acting. She reads the script, grasps what it's about, then performs it, indicating and telegraphing all the way. It works well in films like "Ruthless People" and "Outrageous Fortune," but it doesn't stretch far.

Bette worked well on stage in Hello, Dolly, but it's an empty, surface-level performance. It was Bette playing Bette playing Dolly. Donna Murphy and Bernadette Peters actually play the character of Dolly and it's very moving.

There are some roles that Bette is perfect for like all those Touchstone comedies from the 80's and Hocus Pocus, but Gypsy was wayyyyyy out of her wheelhouse. She had moments during the film, but her performance as a whole was almost impossibly inept.

Annette Bening

Al Pacino owns this thread.

HOO-AH!

As much as we love him here on DL, Tim Curry definitely deserves a mention.

Yes... Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest. Meryl Streep can get a little hammy, too.

Lucille Ball

Jet Li, in both Chinese and American movies.

Jon Cryer

I respect Daniel Day-Lewis' dedication to his roles - but he always looks like he's acting.

Christine Lahti.

Annette Bening.

2/3 of a WW for r46.

Nathan Lane. Can’t stand him. He’s a legend in his own mind.

R78, I thought the same thing, but I thought he was the best thing BY FAR about Angels in America (at least the London production).

Mariska Hargitay. Hammiest actress on TV.

Kevin Bacon

Paul Porcasi

Lynne Pigthen

Babe, the pig.

Keanu Reeves

Daniel Day Lewis

What, no one has yet mentioned John Malkovich? Case in point reason season of "Billions." I think he has even said himself that he is a terrible actor. He has been terrible in everything I've ever seen him in.

Anne Baxter

Grayson Hall

Paul Giamatti

Paul Giamatti in Billions

[quote]Miranda Richardson

Hmmph.

Maggie fucking Smith

Meryl Streep

Angela Lansbury

Barbra Streisand

Bryan Cranston

Jaon Crawford

Susan Hayward

Sally fucking Field

Al Pacino

Gary Oldman, usually

Knightley is wooden, not hammy

Lucille Ball in EVERYTHING that came after I Love Lucy.

Probably nobody has ever heard of him, but the hammiest acting ever recorded was Robert Newton in the old movie "Blackbeard".

[quote]Rod Steiger.

OMG, yes! I've cringed in almost everything he's been in. He ruins The Big Knife. He looks cool AF, but he destroys this movie with his overacting.

Geraldine Page

John Malkovich

Vincent D'Onofrio

All of whom can be very effective in their hamminess!

Hammy the Hamster

Bonnie Franklin.

Judy Davis, Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange can be quite hambone Isabelle Huppert and Debra Winger are the anti-hammy

How the hell could anyone forget Samuel L. Jackson? Or Chris Tucker?

Chris Tucker for sure

Not really well known, but character actor Timothy Carey, who was kind of like a proto John Turtorro. There's a funny video on YouTube that talks a little about him. He was so annoying on East of Eden that Elia Kazan supposedly stabbed him with a pen, and Kirk Douglas kicked his ass on Paths of Glory. (You can see him hamming it up below.)

Coincidentally, I just saw Timothy Carey in "Minnie & Moskowitz" last week: hammy actor in a hammy role--it was kind of fun in a ridiculous way. Kirk could be quite the ham himself, maybe he resented the competition.

Al Pacino -

Jim Carrey? He’s hammy as hell but I guess that’s his shtick. Even in his dramatic roles though he’s pretty hammy (except eternal sunshine )

Jon Hamm.

Has Gary Oldman ever given a lived-in performance?

Pacino. Sean Penn.

David Tennant

I thought Gary Oldman was great in The Contender. Don't remember him in much else though.