10 Weird Times Actors Responded To Online Reviews
Everybody's a critic, and actors sometimes HATE that.
Everybody's a critic, or so the saying goes. We live in a world now where everyone can push their opinions about, well, anything, to an audience of millions within a matter of seconds, and sometimes these opinions might even catch the attention of those who made the thing.
This is certainly true in Hollywood, whereby the vast majority of major actors and filmmakers have social media presences and, whether they admit it or not, pay some degree of attention to how their works are received.
Naturally actors are busy people and generally don't have time to respond to reviews and critiques individually, though every so often a review might tickle or aggravate them enough that they feel compelled to reply.
Unsurprisingly most of the time it's not a rave review the actors will respond to but a specific criticism that they, the actor, will disagree with.
The platforms are myriad - IMDB message boards, Twitter, or more mainstream press outlets like Variety - and one suspects that most of the commenters and critics are left surprised that their subject actually bothered to offer a riposte...
10. Bryan Cranston Didn't Care For A Festival Review Calling His Direction "Inept" - Last Chance
Though modern social media makes us take actors' online presences for granted, back in the late '90s it was virtually unheard of for celebrities to directly interface with fans or critics.
Bryan Cranston was massively ahead of his time, then, when in 1999 he responded to a review of his first and only feature directing effort to date, Last Chance.
Shortly after the film's premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, a review was posted on IMDB disparaging the writing as "amateur", the direction "inept," and suggesting that Cranston - who wrote, directed, and appeared in the film - stick to acting.
A few weeks later, however, Cranston replied to the review with his own rebuke, claiming that general audiences at the fest rated the film highly, and arguing that the reviewer complimenting the performances was, in a roundabout way, also praising Cranston for writing the parts in the first place.
Cranston also asked the reviewer to elaborate on his story critiques and even begged him to consider removing the veil of online anonymity.
Somewhat unsurprisingly the user, known only as "david-47", didn't take Cranston up on either request.