10 Actors Who Gave Their Best Ever Performance In Bad Movies

8. Jennifer Aniston - Cake

Though Jennifer Aniston is of course best known for her work on Friends and a glut of slushy rom-com movies, every so often she turns in a solid dramatic performance that, depressingly, flies totally under the radar.

Aniston made an overt bid for an Oscar in the 2014 drama Cake, where she played a grieving woman battling chronic physical and emotional pain in the wake of a car accident which killed her son.

And to her credit, Aniston's performance is shockingly convincing: she strips away every sense of glamour audiences associate with her, and is totally believable as world-weary protagonist Claire Bennett.

Aniston ultimately received Golden Globe and SAG nominations for her performance, though was likely denied further awards success because the film, as written and directed, was just so damn flat.

Every dramatic turn goes the most obvious, Oscar-baiting route possible, and no matter how hard Aniston was clearly trying to anchor proceedings, she was largely left stranded in a self-consciously miserable slog.