10 Formally Awesome Actors Who Made Us Forget Why They Were Great

By Jonathan Day /

To quote everyone's favourite suit wearing, whiskey swilling, lady killing (m)ad man Don Draper, "In Greek, nostalgia literally means pain from an old wound". It's a sentiment that rings horribly true on the occasions when you find yourself watching a performance of the staggering, audaciously craptacular variety...finger nails digging into palms as your hands form little balls of rage, stomach ulcers beginning to ferment, jaw tightening with every passing second of screen time being given over to this shlub... when suddenly, a little light bulb memory flicks on in the darkest recesses of your mind and you remember with a growing sense of confusion, horror and impossible sadness, that the actor on screen mangling his dialogue, over egging every expression or simply standing there listlessly, waiting for death to release him from all this exhaustion was once upon a time someone to truly be reckoned with. Then you sit (slump) back down in your tasteful flat (rat infested bedsit), loosen your tie (cheese puff stained string vest) and sink a couple of whiskey's (bottle caps of bleach) to dull the pain and try to kill those old memories of the good days when that fella on screen screaming about bees or waggling a gun around in his neon underpants was something truly special. Like any once golden relationship that has since turned sour, the frustration of remembering just how good things were actually sort of physically hurts. All the squandered potential of what could have been super-condensing and upper cutting you in the groin. The following are (in no particular order) a list of performers that inspire equal parts depression and wild, fist flinging rage at their stratospheric fall off of the "good acting" plinth. *note - you'll probably be expecting most of what's about to come what with being the savvy pop culture fan that you are, so let's try and make this as a sweary and fun as possible why don't we?