John C Reilly: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

3. Phil Last - The Good Girl (2002)

There's just something about Reilly's look that immediately lends itself to hang-dog losers and outsiders: he's not conventionally good-looking by Hollywood standards (whether you like it or not, that matters to casting directors), he gives great "dope face" and he suits indies that tend to feature such characters.

In The Good Girl, he was at peak loser: portraying a stoner with an improbably beautiful wife and life he was throwing away through reckless shlubbing with his no-good stoner best friend. Remarkably, he still makes Phil a likeable, almost tragi-comic figure: he's the archetypal Shakespearean fool, cuckolded (but entirely to blame) whose ultimate "victory" is hollow and tainted.

Reilly plays the stoner element perfectly, and it's his goofy charm that turns Jennifer Anniston (in her best performance) into a villainess with such complexity that you can't help but think you'd do exactly as she did. After all, she's trapped in a world where a life with him is all she can hope to achieve.