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Today we’re playing a game of underrated/overrated, Hollywood actors edition.

Actors who kick off their career in a major franchise movie role, like Kristen Stewart (Twilight), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), and Tom Holland (Spider-Man), to name a few, often find it immensely challenging to break away from that famous association.

Then you have actors who redeem themselves after years away from the big screen, like the 53-year-old man of the hour, Brendan Fraser.

I have a feeling The Telegraph made its list of the most underrated and overrated actors in Hollywood based solely on Fraser, largely thanks to his starring role in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale.

As the publication noted, the “most piercing screams so far at Venice this year weren’t for Timothée Chalamet, Adam Driver or Cate Blanchett”. Rather, they were for the role Fraser played as a 42-stone (267-kilogram) man at the end of his life.

An actor’s perceived commercial value, as well as the zeal of their fans, can put them in or out of synch with their actual ability. Not to mention how hard it can be to shift their “early critical estimations of their talent” if they happen to become better later on.

The Telegraph’s list of underrated and overrated actors does not mean that anyone is totally awful or flawlessly great, but they each trigger “a little twinge of injustice”.

Underrated

Brendan Fraser

There’s no official trailer out for The Whale yet, but Fraser’s performance is obviously brilliant for two reasons so far.

First, the bulky prosthetics still allow for some recognisability, which has proven valuable:

Second, the role is no self-abasing plea for sympathy, but an encapsulation of what made him so watchable in the first place, drawing on his considerable affability and comedic talents, as well as strapping physical presence.

…After more than a decade in relative obscurity, due to a mix of personal and professional setbacks, so begins a very welcome third act.

He’ll be in Martin Scorsese’s latest new film, too, arriving early next year.

Bel Powley

Was there a surplus of spectacularly talented young British actresses when Powley arrived on the scene?

Her fearless, transfixing breakthrough in Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl should have put her on a Florence Pugh trajectory, but the fire never quite caught.

Powley has done well in television – she shone in The Morning Show and Informer and was terrific in last month’s Everything I Know About Love.

Charlie Hunnam

By all rights, the 42-year-old Hunnam should be Britain’s Channing Tatum: he has the looks, the charm, the paradoxical rugged vulnerability, the unexpected and completely thrilling range.

His work in James Gray’s The Lost City of Z has been lauded as “noble, haunted, shattering”:

Overrated

Well, this one will irritate a few folks…

Tom Hanks

He may have charm, but some reckon his versatility is lacking:

When it comes to twinkling and/or stoical decency, there’s no one finer. But the further Hanks strays from his strong suit, the more his limitations show.

Take his Gringotts Goblin version of the conniving Colonel Parker in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis: the performance was all rubber, no soul, and a great film’s only bum note.

Daniel Craig

When you take on an iconic blockbuster role with multiple films in the franchise, you might remain glued to a certain look and feel.

Like Craig, who is “always trying to prove he can cut loose”. This is also true in Knives Out, where his “sense of humour remains scant” and he’s lacking “inspiration from within”:

Daniel Radcliffe

Yeah, well, isn’t this one a little obvious:

Child stardom stranded him: as an adult he’s neither a gifted character actor nor a credible leading man, and thus an awkward fit for every role in his pay grade.

Whenever he shows up – a heinous-looking biopic of the American musical comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic is next – you can almost hear the cosmic echo of a producer muttering 18 months earlier: “Well, if we can’t get [x], there’s always Daniel Radcliffe”.

We’ve touched on the Weird Al biopic before but here’s the trailer once more:

 

Shame, it’s not easy to break free of the Harry Potter empire.

If you want to play more overrated/underrated, head here for the rest of the actors shaded and spotlit on The Telegraph’s list.

[source:telegraph]