Favorite, stupidest, or most hated miscasted acting role

[Blarg]

Who stands out to you as being jarringly inappropriate, whether they eventually worked out okay in the role or didn't?

[Blarg]

I just heard Leonardo DiCaprio is being cast in Hemingway's "For Whom The Bells Tolls." He's a cute kid, but jeez, he's no Hemingway protagonist.

I'm really disappointed that Martin Scorcese seems to have made him his new DeNiro, too, putting him in any and every movie no matter the subject. At least DeNiro was a good fit for the type of films Scorcese used to concentrate on, and an enormous talent, too. DiCaprio is...well...he's a nice boy. *sigh*

Another favorite miscasting: Michael Keaton as Batman. He's great for playing Beteljuice, but how Tim Burton could pick a short, sloppily pudgy, balding Herkimer McJerkimer dude known at that time for his comic performances to play a brooding, twisted, sophisticated upper class vigilante is beyond me -- maybe he lost a bet or something. There was a huge and well-deserved uproar at the casting at the time. Keaton wound up doing better than I thought he would.

Another one is that the guy originally wanted for the lead in Airplane! was Barry Manilow. Damn, that would have destroyed that movie.

Oh and Denise Richards as the nuclear scientist in that James Bond movie stretched credibility more than a little.

[-Skeme-]

Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. They shouldn't even attempt to recreate that classic. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

[Rushmore]

Sofia Coppola in Godfather III.

Fine, since then, she's made her mark. Great.

But she definitely had some amends to make after what she did to that movie. This broad had no business acting at all, much less in a main role in such a highly-anticipated movie. Every single time she was on-screen, she was awful.

She couldn't even die well at the end. When she's shot, and she's bleeding, falling to her knees on the operahouse steps, she looks at Pacino and says "Dad..." as if the rest of the sentence was "...would it be ok if Jennifer stayed over tonight?"

Then Pacino, realizing just how awful she was, goes WAY above and beyond with his grief scene, further adding to the all-around badness.

Funny thing is, if she hadn't been so bad, his uber-emoting might have actually worked.

Anyway, that's my vote.

[twang]

Ralph Fiennes as the bad guy in Red Dragon (Manhunter-remake). He is a fine actor and I love anti-type casting moves like that, but in this case it was just terrible. He did what he could with the part though, he was just not the right guy.

/twang

[maryfield48]

Tom Cruise.

You pick the role.

[heavybody]

I didn't care for Will Smith as James West in the remake of "The Wild Wild West".

[BeerMoney]

Tom Arnold was perfect in one of the Austin Powers movies.

[Uglyowl]

Eric Christian Olsen and Derek Richardson in Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.

Why bother?

[-Skeme-]

I thought Ralph Fiennes was good in that role, but then again I don't think I've seen his other movies.