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5 Underrated Actors Who Don’t Get Enough Credit

Sure, you've got your Brad Pitts, your Robert Downey Jr.s, your Johnny Depps. And yeah, there's that chameleon-woman Meryl Streep, the wonderful Helen Mirren, and the now-everywhere Jennifer Lawrence rounding it out on the female side. So what do all these players have in common? They're stars. They're the best of the best. They sell tickets. And though we appreciate the great performances they've given over the years, sometimes the big stars just get too much credit. I mean, yeah, these guys are brilliant, but what about the other people acting in the movies? The people who you just kind accept are just there time after time. So what's the big deal, you ask? That's their job, right? They're not supposed to overshadow the stars.

1) Anna Faris

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Anna Faris is fearless. She’s an utterly selfless performer, too, a smart and brilliant comic actor willing to go to whatever lengths to earn her paycheck (and get the laughs): nope, you’ll never catch Anna Faris giving any less than 100% no matter how low-brow the material. Point is, the woman is hilarious, somebody who regularly goes toe to toe with her male equivalents and comes out on top. And though Faris often plays characters whose key traits include dimness or air-headedness, she still manages to make these characters wholly likeable.

There are several performances which highlight Faris as an actor of real talent: take Lost In Translation, where Faris assumes the role of a vacant movie-star, cleverly subverting an audience’s expectations of what she might be like in real life by knowingly throwing herself into the clueless character. Ultimately, Faris has rarely been given the chance to play outside of broad comedy flicks, but we think she’s more than capable of going up against the big guns: after all, she’s a genuine star.

Do you agree or disagree with these choices? Which actors do you consider to be underrated and deserving of a bit more attention? Feel free to let us know what you think in the comment section below.