Feb 26 2009
Top 10 Worst Acting Performance by Athletes
Athletes love the attention and fame they get from playing sports. This celebrity craving often results in them trying their hand in other forms of entertainment, with varying levels of success. Several try musical careers, usually unsuccessfully, as we’ve shown with our list of the Top 10 Worst Musical Performances by Athletes. Others, perhaps fearful that the recording booth is too small for them, head straight to the big screen to show that their seventh grade drama class wasn’t just an elective-filler.
This can result in great performances and lucrative second careers, including Oakland Raider Carl Weathers’ fantastic portrayal of Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies (as well as his performance as Chubbs in Happy Gilmore). But more often than not, it results in catastrophe.
And of course, it’s far more enjoyable to look at the athletes who have failed miserably, which we do here, with the Top 10 Worst Acting Performance by Athletes.
The Rock, a former linebacker at the University of Miami, was no stranger to hamming it up as a professional wrestler before he ever made it to the big screen. The Game Plan was the last movie in which Dwayne Johnson used his wresting name, but if that Disney film was any indication, the bad acting isn’t going anywhere. As Richard Roeper said, “It’s what I like to call an amnesia movie. Six months from now, if someone asks me about The Game Plan, I’ll be hard-pressed to remember what it’s about or who’s in it.”
Dennis Rodman’s performances, on the other hand, always proved hard to forget. The All-Star forward for the Pistons, Spurs, and Bulls was never one to shy away from attention, so it was only natural for him to try his hand at acting. Unfortunately for him (but awesome for those who love to mock), he was better at grabbing rebounds than making movies. Notable failures include his role in Double Team, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and the rather atrocious Simon Sez (Fun Fact: Rodman’s co-star was none other than everyone’s favorite overrated comedian, Dane Cook).
Rodman’s basketball past, and awful acting performance, gave critics ample ammunition for “clever” puns in their reviews, something Joe Leydon took full advantage of in Variety: “Dennis Rodman shoots — and kicks — but fails to score in ‘Simon Sez,’ a frenetically junky action adventure that will quickly dribble off to vid stores after a token fast break in theatrical release. The flamboyant ex-NBA star…isn’t guilty of a personal foul. But Rodman is stuck in a rattletrap star vehicle that recalls the most desperately unfunny spy spoofs of the mid-1960s.” Critic Eric Snider was not as kind: “Unable to speak very coherently…Rodman is restricted to brief lines of dialogue, yet even those are stupid; one can only imagine how much dumber they’d have been in they were complex and used difficult tenses.”
Speaking of one-liners, football Hall-of-Famer Howie Long’s only role as a leading man was in the uninspired 1998 action film, Firestorm, which bore the catchy tagline of “Fight fire with fire.” Naturally. But while the film itself had its share of problems, Long’s performance in particular was also raked over the coals. The New York Times’ Stephen Holden wrote that Long’s “expressionless face and monotone delivery make even Arnold Schwarzenegger at his most robotic seem like a hypersensitive crybaby.”
Somewhat amazingly, neither Rodman nor Long cracked the top-five in our list of Worst Acting Performances. Those positions were reserved for only the most embarrassing of roles, like Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, for example.
The former professional bodybuilder and action-movie star, and current Governor of California, has appeared in over 30 major motion pictures, with surprising levels of success. While the Governator did have a handful of impressive roles (we all can agree that Twins was clearly snubbed at the Oscars in 1988), more often than not, his performances were rather less than impressive. Perhaps there’s no better example of this than his interpretation of Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin, quite possibly the worst of the Caped Crusader films ever made.
When commenting on his comical dialogue, James Berardinelli for ReelReviews wrote, “Schwarzenegger, aside from looking like a cross between the Michelin Man and Robocop, appears totally confused about what he’s doing.”
Leonard Schwarz of Palo Alto Online piled on: “As Mr. Freeze, a mad scientist who must keep stealing diamonds because they for some reason keep his body at the abnormally cold temperature it for some reason requires, Arnold Schwarzenegger tries for self-parody and fails (the dialogue is the real villain in his case).”
For decades, sports stars have done their best (well, tried at least) to transfer their career from the playing field to the world of acting, usually with comically embarrassing outcomes. With their marketability and mass appeal, this transition will surely continue for years to come. And that’s fine by us.
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