10 Greatest Over-Acted Performances In Movie History

A friend of mine once told me that he thought Jak Nicholson was miscast as Jack Torrance in The Shining. The reason, he said, is that Jack Nicholson in general already looks pretty nuts, so him going beserk by the end of the film isn’t much of a surprise.

Would The Shining be a scarier movie if someone like goodie-two-shoes Tom Hanks was running around trying to axe his family?

It’s tough to say. But more importantly, would anyone else have gone quite so bananas as Nicholson does?

The confrontation on the staircase with Torrance asking Wendy for the bat becomes a grotesque parody of a domestic, with Nicholson grinning, gurning, wrigglig, mimicking and screaming his way towards his hysterical wife with each step.

And once he’s got an axe in his hands Nicholson goes full Looney Tunes, chopping away at the hotel door whilst reciting ‘Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in’ and of course the iconic ‘Heeeere’s Johnny!’ when he finally breaks through to his cowering family, complete with cinema’s best psychoctic grin.

‘Heeeere’s Johnny’ is another example of an incredible bit of improv that made the cut. Kubrick made his cast shoot takes again and again and again until true madness set in. And, lucky for us, Nicholson’s wonderfully uninhibited performance is the result.