Game Of Thrones: 10 Actors Whose "Acting" Is Distractingly Bad

Back to Drama School, people.

by Sam Hill
Right now, HBO's insanely successful Game of Thrones is arguably the most popular show on television. But that doesn't mean for a single minute that it's perfect - and that goes double for one particular aspect of production that continues to come up short: the acting. So whilst Game of Thrones is made interesting for the way in which has brought together so many renowned veterans of the stage - Charles Dance, Jonathan Pryce, Dame Diana Rigg - with such brilliantly cast actors like Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Natalie Dormer (to name but a few), it's not all a walk around the rose gardens. Because there are also a good number of actors on the show who are constantly bringing it down. That's to say, there is a lot of bad acting going on in Game of Thrones, week after week, and it comes courtesy of both characters of the major and minor kind. Be it due to a bad accent, stilted line delivery, or just a general failure to make audiences believe that they are truly part of Westeros, here are the 10 actors whose "acting" is distracting enough that it actually takes you far out of George R.R. Martin's world...

10. Aiden Gillen - Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish

Aiden Gillen's Littlefinger makes the list in 10th place, basically because Aiden Gillen isn't actually a bad actor in any way - it's just that bloody accent that makes it seem as such. On the show's fifth and current season, then, Littlefinger's accent has made the full-on transition to Irish, or, like, maybe not? It's made a full-on transition into something, at least, but - whatever it is - it's not at all like the accent that the actor started out with on the show's first season, which never had the sort of overt Irish emphasis that it does now. Seriously: check out a clip of Littlefinger at any point in season one (or two or three) and you'll notice a fundamentally difference: right now, Gillen seems to be emphasising the Irishness in his voice, almost to the point of parody, whilst in the past the Irishness felt more subtle in nature. It's really weird and distracting - not to mention wandering as hell.

9. Maisie Williams - Arya Stark

Sorry, Maisie Williams: you're really cool, but your acting is all over the place. That's not to say Williams hasn't put in a consistent performance outside of Game of Thrones (she's very good in the recent film The Falling, for example), just that things are a bit off here. So whilst Williams isn't a terrible actress, it's the consistency of her performance that renders it distracting: sometimes she'll deliver a line brilliantly, and you'll say: "Okay, she's not bad," and then five minutes later audiences are being treated to a moment of what can only be described as "anti-acting," which almost always borders on the cringeworthy. "At least Maisie is perfectly fine half the time, though," you might say, and that's a fair point: she could be endlessly terrible, and that would be bad, bad, bad. But there's something even more frustrating about an actor who swaps between being serviceable and awkward on a whim because you know there's some actual talent fighting to come through.

8. Hugo Culverhouse - Stableboy

Played by actor Hugo Culverhouse, this character doesn't even have a real name, but has become legendary amongst fans of the show for what occurs in one rather brief scene - namely due to an instance of very bad acting. So "Stableboy," as he's known, appears in episode eight of season one. As Arya Stark tries to escape Winterfell, said character tries to stop her. His line delivery - "Want you, Wolf Girl. Come here..." - is so awful that it's genuinely bewildering as to how the actor was signed for the part. When he grabs Arya, she stabs him. And guess what? Stableboy smiles. He smiles. Not on purpose, mind; the actor - paid to do this role, mind - just couldn't stop himself. And that's about it. So whilst this might seem like something that happened so long ago that it's not worth even thinking about now, there's a reason why this moment has stuck in the minds of so many Game of Thrones fans ever since it first aired: it is bad enough that it very much breaks the tension necessary to the scene - essentially, one in which a child dies.

7. Sophie Turner - Sansa Stark

It's true that Sophie Turner has improved a lot over the course of Game of Thrones; she was noticeably more competent when delivering a line in season four than she was during the first or seconds seasons of the show, in which she mostly sounded like she was reading the script for the first time during a rehearsal for a play she didn't really want to be a part of. But that doesn't mean she's morphed into a particularly good actress. Which is to say, her line-readings across the span of season five so far have felt noticeably lackluster; she could be played by anybody. Sure, Sansa has had a terrible time of late and one could certainly argue that she's kind of an empty shell as a result. But Turner acts the part in a way you'd expect from somebody working for a drama A-Level. It's just a bit... bland.

6. Hafþór Júlíus "Thor" Björnsson - The Mountain

Hafþór Júlíus "Thor" Björnsson has one of those names you really don't want to try to pronounce - let's just call him The Mountain, okay? Believe it or not, The Mountain has been played by three different people across the span of the show, and was recast between seasons two and three, and then during season five again - with this guy. Björnsson, a professional strongman from Iceland, was presumably cast as said character because it's all about the physique where The Mountain is concerned, right? Despite that, his acting skills were noticeably lacking whenever he was forced to open his mouth. His line delivery - few and far between as it was - felt stilted and odd. It wasn't detrimental to the series on the whole, of course, but it was distracting that a character who was supposed to be super intimidating sounded more like a drunk, gargling man-baby.

5. Kit Harington - Jon Snow

Is it Kit Harington? Is it Jon Snow? Where does the actor end and the fictional character begin? Going by his performances in movies such as Pompeii and Spooks: The Greater Good, Harrington is probably the one to blame for Jon Snow's lack of personality (though one could also argue that it isn't his fault; Jon Snow is a very insular character in the books). Still, Harington is pretty darn wooden in both of those films - mere extensions of his Jon Snow persona; all good looks and broody glances. Jon Snow currently appears to be on the path towards becoming a richer, more interesting character, of course, but Harrington's portrait of the bastard Stark son is bloody dull to watch. Harrington might look the part, but he fails to imbue the character with anything more than a single emotion - he is the living definition of the term "despondent." You know the feeling whenever the show switches back to the Wall: "Aw, do we have to?"

4. Dean-Charles Chapman - Tommen Baratheon

It seems like a lot of the criticisms in this article are aimed at child actors, but most of said child actors are actually in their late teens - don't feel too bad slating them. After all, do audiences just have to excuse bad acting when it comes courtesy of actors who are relatively young? Is it just something we shrug off as an inevitable part of the business? It doesn't make sense to do that. Because - c'mon - nobody would accept an actor as uncomfortable to watch as Dean-Charles Chapman if he were older and playing an adult role on the show. It just wouldn't happen. Not that Dean-Charles Chapman is the worst actor ever - he just feels Drama School awkward and a bit super cringeworthy in every scene. It's Natalie Portman's fault: she set such a high standard for "being a child and acting" in Leon that it's hard to forgive other young actors for appearing "inexperienced." If she can put out a performance like that at a mere age 12, why can't we get a 17-year-old Tommen who can deliver a believable line once in a while?

3. Sibel Kekilli - Shae

It's a good thing that Shae is dead now, because she never failed to ruin every scene that she appeared in with acting that was just flat as a pancake. Seriously: Sibel Kekilli - a former pornstar turned actress - made little sense from a casting perspective, because she couldn't pull off her role as Tyrion's lover to save her live. Ironically, it didn't save her life: she's dead. There was just something so inherently awkward about the delivery inherent to everything that came out of her mouth; she never came to embody the part in a way that felt right, despite appearing in a whopping 20 episodes of the show. Which is... well, pretty damn terrible. When it came time for her to go the way of the dodo, it's not at all surprising that audiences all across the globe cheered in their droves. What were they thinking with this one?

2. Lino Faciolli - Robin Arryn

Oh, God: this actor... he's just the worst, isn't he? The only success that stems from casting such an inherently awful actor in this role is that it makes Robin Arryn super, infuriatingly annoying. He's just the most insufferable little brat since... well, Joffrey. But that doesn't mean that Lino Faciolli is playing him "well" - just that he's a terrible actor and every line that comes out of his mouth feels like acting poison. Seriously: how did they settle on this kid? He's genuinely incapable of being a scene without looking as though he has no idea he's even on a TV show. Does Faciolli know how insufferable he is? How is he going to feel in five or six years when he looks back at his performance here and realises that he's totally and utterly unbearable? So, uh, yeah: they got the detestable nature of this character spot-on, apparently. Shame that the acting couldn't match that.

1. Emilia Clarke - Daenerys Targaryen

The problem of Emilia Clarke is as follows: Emilia Clarke is stunningly beautiful. She also happens to play a badass character who takes no sh*t from anyone; a sterling example of female empowerment if ever there was one. And it's a combination of those two factors that have resulted in audiences excusing the fact that... well, she's not a very good actress. She's not absolutely tragic, mind - just a bit flat, passive, emotionless. There is a distinct lack of "acting" going on whenever the show swings by to check in on her. Barring a few instances, her line readings are pretty much always exactly the same. But because Daenerys is such a wonderful and interesting character on paper, it's possible to look past Clarke's failings and trick yourself into thinking that it's the who is making you feel like that. It's not the case; Clarke is absolutely gorgeous, and there's no denying that she is a lovely person in real life, but her portrait lacks fire, passion and gusto - it's stilted and boring.
Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.