How Do You Keep Getting Work?! The Ten Most Astounding Careers in Hollywood

I imagine this will be the most volatile bit of writing on the site in a while and I can see why. These are ten “actors” who have achieved incredible success in Hollywood, immense critical acclaim to some degree and yet we’d be much happier if they disappeared from filmmaking altogether and never starred in a movie ever again. From the grating, the obnoxious and the outright absurd, here are ten people with enormous amount of fame they really shouldn’t have at all. We were going to include Jessica Alba and Megan Fox to the fold, but that’d be as easy as pushing an amputee down the stairs. We expect no end of scrutiny and we welcome it.

Brendan Fraser
Which role from Fraser are you most fond of? The spastic screeching punk rocker in “Airheads”? The spastic screeching Tarzan in “George of the Jungle”? The spastic screeching mountie in “Dudley Do Right”? The spastic screeching adventurer in “The Mummy”? Or the spastic screeching caveman in “Encino Man”? Hey we definitely understand the appeal of Fraser since the man has a lot of charisma that wins people over time and time again not to mention most of us grew up with Fraser when he debuted on film in the nineties, but all nostalgia aside, Fraser can’t act a lick and he’s yet to provide a role that breaks his comfort zone which is ultimately his shtick as a spastic screeching character in almost every single performance he’s ever given.

Even in the likes of indie fare like “The Passion of Darkly Noon” that required he play something of a psycho, he was still screeching spastic Fraser. In a deal of what we can only assume involved animal sacrifice and the maiming of a virgin, Fraser has continued to garner an immense career for doing little else but grinning like a buffoon, displaying zero comedic prowess, and basically phoning it in, in junk like “Furry Vengeance.” When your most recent public moments involving clapping your hands and laughing like a moron at horrific jokes by DeNiro at an Award’s show, it’s about time for this man’s shocking career to end.

Milla Jovovich
Riding on the wings of shocking luck, a bit part in an abysmal science fiction film, and pure utter nepotism, Milla Jovovich is the androgynous female star whose managed to win the hearts of fanboys everywhere for displaying little to no sex appeal, talent, or individual personality traits at all. Even in garbage indie fare like “45” where the woman has had the ability to show off her acting skills, she’s bombed out big time and has now been doing nothing but starring in box office blockbuster vehicles “Resident Evil” which immensely deviated from the actual storylines of the game for the purposes of allowing Jovovich a podium to display her skills to mug for the camera and screech one-liners that are flatter than her bust.

Not surprisingly her husband Paul WS Anderson has managed to direct the “Resident Evil” films and has based the entire storyline around her character giving supporting roles to more important characters of the series. The storyline has been a basic reflection of the director’s feelings of her turning her from a secret agent in to a bonafide sci-fi goddess who is invincible, invulnerable, and able to have whatever power the storyline will concoct. And the woman continues grabbing work in spite of the fact she is as shrill as teeth grinding and as one-dimensional as a sheet of paper. We just hope the “Resident Evil” movies end so she can go back to making experimental music no one will even care about listening to. Except for her husband, of course.

Scout Taylor Compton
Like every other little tart out there, Scout continues to grow a fanbase around a career that has inexplicably blossomed in to cult status. This a girl who has starred in literally everything under the sun and now that she’s reaching her momentum is holding out on a new “Halloween” movie if the script isn’t good. Did you read that? This girl who holds no actual talent or range or depth is holding out on a slasher movie (!) if the script isn’t good enough. “Halloween” is a franchise that went from a genuinely excellent little suspense story about the shape, a merciless monster hiding in a shadows in to an utterly abysmal hack and slash genre twinkie factory that doles out the humdrum thrills for an audience who doesn’t even mind that Michael–once the epitome of evil–is now just another masked slasher thanks to Rob Zombie.

Scout Taylor Compton has nothing unique about her and has played to the crowds of internet goons since her breakout role in Zombieween masking the fact that she’s shrill, obnoxious, one-dimensional and potentially void of starring in an actual good movie any time soon. Compton continues riding on the coat tails of other bigger better stars and seems doomed to being nothing more than a second banana known for starring in two god awful remakes, and B grade horror flicks, and yet she’s still maintaining a solid film career popping up in the most recent “The Runaways” in 2010. There’s something to be said for a good agent and mediocre looks. If she’s the next generation of scream queens, begin building that time machine and send me back to the eighties, please.

Kristen Stewart
Hey I’m always a big fan of the “I Hate Twilight” band wagon. They’re the remaining people in the world who have yet to fall under the spell of Stephanie Meyer’s tame quasi-horror romance that’s really just Mormon propaganda underneath the hokum, but I’ve never seen where Stewart could possibly go after “Panic Room.” Shifting from gawkish to mildly sexually appealing Stewart has always straddled the line of mainstream tool and indie darling with less than amusing roles in the likes of “In to the Wild” and “Adventureland” while revealing her inherent lack of real skill or talent in the “Twilight” movies where she’s made a killing out of running around looking desponded and reacting to two metrosexual young men fighting for her love.

Stewart has fully embraced her role as a tween queen and has prevented herself from being a full on Tiger Beat icon by secretly bashing the Twilight series and its fans in the distance explaining how the frantic love for her and the series has been ridiculous. We’re not buying it. Stewart is that one actress in Hollywood who will assuredly ride on her fame as a “Twilight” heroine for as long as possible while starring as the morose teen we’ve seen her portray a thousand times over until she’s nothing more than a Johnny Depp wannabe, hiding out in the background and pretending to be punk rock when she’s really anything but. Lacking any discernable talent or sexual charisma, Stewart is another story of fame that’s undeserved and (based on her attitude) unwanted.

Katherine Heigl
When she was on “Roswell” she gave the cast and crew no end of difficulty and complained she didn’t even want to be on the show. When was on “Knocked Up” she complained about the movie and criticized the story insisting it was sexist. When she was on “Grey’s Anatomy” was also something of a prima donna bashing the cast and crew and dropped out of the series early. And this wouldn’t be surprising if this were an amazing actress because nine times out of ten if there’s an incredible actor, the odds are they’re prima donnas. But Heigl is not a good actress. All bias’ aside this woman acts as if she’s too cool for school bashing nearly every production she’s been in and yet is never opposed to starring in a horrific romance comedy to collect a check.

Heigl has no discernable talents except for looking good and even in that department she’s falling short of that as she ages, and younger better actresses continue appearing in Hollywood every years who possess actual skill in front of the camera. Heigl’s attitude toward Hollywood has made her one of the most unlikable (and disliked) people in the business and she’s managed to alienate her small fanbase and just about everyone else by biting the hand that feeds her, which is not much of a loss because Heigl simply has no talents to speak of. In all of her past projects she was the least talked about element and she’s continued on her reign of destruction starring in mediocre to abysmal comedies where she displays zero skill and garners an easy paycheck and continues acting as if she’s this generation’s Bette Davis.

Channing Tatum
Tatum is yet another case of Hollywood pretty much plastering whatever image they desire on someone who doesn’t have an actual individual appeal to them other than that of a sexual nature. Tatum lucked in to his big time career as an actor and since then has been on auto drive doing nothing but roles that require very little of him. He’s played a street tough in dreck like “Step Up” and “Step Up 2 the Streets” that required him to do nothing but smolder and dance. He earned enough indie cred in “A Guide to Recognizing your Saints” where he smoldered for critics.

And since then he’s played soldiers in about every film out there from “Dear John,” to “GI Joe,” right down to “Stop-Loss” and smoldered with fisticuffs in “Fighting”! What range! Frankly, he’s the modern Wahlberg with enough clout and looks to warrant a surefire fan base without ever presenting a distinct talent for the film world. Unlike Wahlberg, Tatum seems comfortable in this pigeonhole because hey–you can’t argue with results. And this man continues grabbing a rabid female fan base. Enjoy it while you can Tatum.

Michelle Rodriguez
Which role from Rodriguez is your favorite? So many to choose from. Was it the sexually ambiguous tough latina in “Girl Fight”? How about her role as the sexually ambiguous tough latina in “Resident Evil”? Or how about the sexually ambiguous tough latina in “Blue Crush”? How about her role as the tough latina in “S.W.A.T.”? Oh! How about her role as the tough latina in “Fast and the Furious”? In either case, Rodriguez can’t not play herself even when donning medieval threads and swinging swords in “BloodRayne” for Uwe Boll, or flying space ships and defending blue thundercats from evil military goons, so it’s a consistent anomaly when she grabs on to fan boys who will vouch for her in spite of the fact she’s done very little in the film world to show that she has the chops to pull in a competent performance. Even her co-star Vin Diesel stretched his legs in a courtroom Dramedy as an overweight mobster while Rodriguez has planted her feet firmly in the sassy tough latina archtype and has been grabbing more and more fans as her overall career remains at a stand still with a mold she has yet to break proving she has little time before she’s just a memory as that butch young hispanic girl who played opposite Diesel in that car movie.

Sam Worthington
For some reason Worthington has been pegged as Hollywood’s go to boy for blockbuster success and the results have been varied in degrees. Shocking enough, Worthington has been in a volume of major blockbusters doing nothing but playing the grizzled hero. He was the primary character in “Terminator Salvation,” he led the charge in “Clash of the Titans,” and horribly enough he starred as the iconic hero Jake Sulley in the Cameron eye roll-a-thon “Avatar” where he played a character so void of personality, appeal, charisma, and overall individuality that he was able to become a sounding board for anyone who wanted to attach their message to. Worthington is Hollywood’s blank piece of paper, he’s nothing but an amorphous action hero to mold sans the talent.

With nothing actually unusual or original about him, he is a blank slate for the studios to paint their movies on and has gone on to lead a number of movies and will go on to lead a number of upcoming blockbusters and potential franchises to take the shape of any hero his agent has in mind for him. Sue me but I don’t get the appeal. He’s not too good looking or even peculiar, he’s barely interesting and in everything we see him in he looks incredibly bored and just phones in all of his performances–especially that of “Avatar.” While Cameron’s film was a humongous success, you’d be lying if you said Worthington was one of the reasons for it because as it stands he’s a poster boy without an actual unique trait about him. It’s mind-blowing his so much success has come to a man without any discernable traits to offer audiences.

Nicolas Cage
Hey at least he changed his last name to garner some actual credibility that didn’t involve the Coppola family, but still… Cage has grabbed an incredible career with films that ask very little of him in the way of range and talent. The man has two levels: Morose and incredibly over the top and he manages to ride on those two levels of horrid emotions in movies that he’s tarnished with his innate ability to tear down any movie however good or bad. “Ghost Rider,” “Wicker Man,” “Weather Man,” “Lord of War,” “Kick-Ass,” “Bangkok Dangerous,” all are films that were otherwise filled with potential and were torn down by his god awful performance, or are films made even worse by his god awful performance.

As Cage gets older and his choice of roles ever the more eccentric, Cage has shown he is hitting the proverbial roof with a late career as an actor whose own reputation as a nutjob has overpowered the apparent fact that Cage never had any actual talent to begin with and has contributed to very little to film since he began acting in the mid-eighties. This is a man with great personality and appeal which would account for his stamina as a performer, but deep down he’s displayed no real range or complexity as a strong actor and instead just wings it with horrific performances in everything under the sun while occasionally using that over the top mugging for a miraculous gem here and there. It’s astonishing how recognizable Cage has become over the years since he made his mark on film, because he’s little else but a long faced cardboard cut out whenever he’s in action or reaching for raw emotions.

Matthew McConaughey
Hey now I’m the last guy who’d call himself a “Family Guy” fan. I pretty much despise the series and am baffled by its success. But that’s another topic for another time. Their most recent skewering of Matthew with Stewie sitting down beside a smug McConaughey as he laughed off Stewie’s disgust at his success with chuckles and spacey banter was insanely on the mark and pretty much feels like how he’d respond if ever confronted by someone who tried to comprehend his fame and iconic rise as a leading man. McConaughey has managed to become nothing more than a running joke for pot use and as this eccentric man who does nothing but giggle and gazed with an open mouth like someone who should be competing in the special Olympics and yet he’s the man who continues landing these humongous roles in big movies that fail to show he’s capable of pulling even the most mediocre performance out there.

Since his slightly bearable debut in “Dazed and Confused,” McConaughey has done nothing but star in movies that require very little of him other than gazing like a stoned moron and whispering in his Southern drawl by flexing his bare chest and it’s remarkable how he’s achieved such credibility for doing nothing. From his stint on “Frailty” to his slumming in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” the man has accomplished very little depth or complexity as a performer and–if you’ve seen his fanbase–doesn’t even have to try to be taken seriously anymore. Which is hilarious considering that one incident on MTV where he fumed at a VJ calling him Matt instead of Matthew. Yes, now he has standards as an actor. Here’s hoping his time as a leading man will soon run out.