Cool-ish Actors, Annoying Characters

Frodo Skyler Anakin Julie Deadpool Regina

Some actors suck. That’s just a fact. However, there are times where actors, through no real fault of their own, get a bit of flack because of the roles they play. Here are six actors who I’d say are at least pretty good at their craft, but are somewhat marred by the personalities and actions of their characters.

Anna Gunn as Skyler White

Skyler White Breaking Bad Anna GunnSkyler White is a fairly intelligent and strong woman who happens to be married to a teacher-turned-meth dealer. She loves her children, supports her husband more often than not, and generally tries to do the right thing. Yet, because of the few times she doesn’t stand by her meth-cooking husband, many Breaking Bad fans grew to hate her. Some weirdos who didn’t seem to appreciate the fact that Anna Gunn was simply playing a role in a fictional television show actually redirected their hatred toward the actor. Ms. Gunn wrote about this unfortunate phenomenon as the show was wrapping up in 2013.

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker

Anakin Skywalker Hayden Christensen Star Wars Revenge of the SithI believe the most annoying things about Anakin Skywalker were written into the character. It wasn’t so much Hayden Christensen’s fault as it was the intent of the writers to make Anakin a whiny teenager. While it’s true that Christensen hasn’t really shown us super great talent outside of the Star Wars movies, I don’t think his acting is as bad as people make it out to be.

I liked Christensen in Takers and Vanishing on 7th Street. Yeah, neither movie is great—the former lacked in character development, and the latter had an ending I didn’t care for—but, they’re okay, and it wasn’t Christensen who brought them down. If anything, he helped make those movies better than they would have been without him.

Aimee Teegarden as Julie Taylor

Aimee TeegardenFor whatever reason, after the first season of Friday Night Lights, the character of Julie Taylor becomes incredibly annoying: she becomes selfish, unreasonable, and never seems to learn from her mistakes. Well, I suppose she does learn one thing: she’ll never do better than the awesome Matt Saracen.

Before her final good decision at the end of the show, Julie Taylor pulls some pretty obnoxious stunts. She has an affair with a married teaching assistant her first semester at college. Then, to avoid going back to school, she intentionally runs her car into a mailbox and lies to her parents about it.

Yeah, I haven’t seen Aimee Teegarden in anything aside from Friday Night Lights, but from FNL alone I get the feeling Teegarden’s pretty good with the acting thing and probably no where as near as annoying as Julie Taylor (also, she’s adorable, so she’s got that going for her).

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9 Maybe-Important Quotes of Fictional Characters

“[S]ometimes dogs or people hate you for no reason.” – Homer J. Simpson

Captured by this guy.

Captured by this guy.

In the episode of The Simpsons, “The Latest Gun in the West,” Homer gives Bart some rather sagely advice: at times, a person (or dog) will hate you with no logical explanation.

The implied point (assuming Homer can imply things), is that where someone’s dislike of you is entirely unreasonable, you should probably just get over it and move on. Or, as it is in Bart’s case, you can get a movie star to smooth things over for you.

Secret option #3 is to follow the wisdom of a masked vigilante known as V: “Violence can be used for good” (this doesn’t count as one of my nine quotes, because I said so).

I’d go with the movie star route myself.

“All that is gold does not glitter,/ Not all those who wander are lost, . . .” – Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo BagginsPenned by J.R.R. Tolkien in the real world, and stolen by Bilbo Baggins who pretends he wrote it in The Fellowship of the Ring. The first two lines of this poem are supposed to be in regards to Aragorn, son of Arathorn, who lives most of his life as a wandering ranger doing awesome things for the denizens of Middle Earth (so long as they’re not from some foreign land in the east and south which he seems to know nothing about).

Both these lines are oft-quoted, with people using the first to say something is more awesome than it first appears. The second line is overused by literature-reading backpackers who like to pretend their drinking, off-the-beaten-path travels to the middle of nowhere, and attempts at hostel promiscuity makes them as cool as Aragorn. I mean, they might be cool, but those three things alone aren’t going to cut it.

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