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12 Great Actors Who Seem Like They Might Be Terrible People

So I have this theory. One way to be a brilliant actor is to be so insane and deluded that you actually believe yourself as a completely different person. When you believe yourself to be something, that’s how you present yourself to other people. And when actors believe themselves, that’s when they can make the part they’re playing truly real. Naturally, this is hugely advantageous for people who are actually crazy.

morgan-freeman

4) Anne Hathaway

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I hesitate to even bring Hathaway up here just because she inspires more hatred than I think she deserves. Yes, she’s insufferable most of the time, but she doesn’t seem like an awful person, just kind of annoyingly chipper. You know those people that you like in person but are really annoying when you hear them talking on Facebook or to a server at a restaurant or to a professor or something? I think she’s just one of those.

When she’s on a stage, “playing to a crowd” as she calls it (I call it being effing annoying), she makes James Franco seem cool. I get the sense that her seeming faux-sincerity is actually her being sincere but I wish she knew how disingenuous she came off to everyone. I don’t condone the viciousness with which people attack her. I do roll my eyes just about every time I see her interviewed.

Her talent though, man. She’s served up her share of stinkers in her relatively short career, but her really good work is really good. She’s one of those actors who is serviceable, decent, fine enough in most things she does, but then there are instances when she taps into something and completely loses everything in a role. Most recently this was in Les Misérables, which while teetering on the border of too perfect, her Dreamed a Dream solo shows her out of her mind, and there are moments where she seems completely uncalculated for a change, and she is devastatingly fantastic. If she could keep doing stuff like that and Rachel Getting Married and less, you know, public speaking, I could easily become a fan.