I'm not saying he wasn't s good actor, I just mean I couldn't appreciate his versatility, let's say. He always played Ray Liotta, to me.
And if you don't already hate me enough, hear me out, I think the same about De Niro....
From my experiences working with actors on sets, the fact that someone is a character actor doesn't mean anything less, it's still work and it still requires acting. People who comment on performances often have no idea that most of the work is quite tedious and mechanical. Sometimes someone being a good actor means they're easy to work with and professional. Most of the time film editing changes the actual performance anyways, so what you see on the screen is often a totally different matter.
Also reputations of actors like Robert De Niro are manufactured and are part of the 'product' or 'brand'. You aren't a fan of the brand, that's fine, those people know what they're doing and they know who is their fanbase.
Sure, I'm not saying it's what the artist wants, I'm saying I can only appreciate one side of his (potential) skills.
FWIW, I agree with you aesthetically.
The actors themselves might prefer to show more range, but they give the directors what they ask for, and the director can worry about a million other things.
There are a few actors whose brand is versatility -- Daniel Day Lewis, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, etc. -- and audiences go precisely to watch them be different. As an actor I have mixed emotions about that. The performances are sometimes more showy than good, to my understanding of "good". But if audiences connect with it, and directors want it, that's the only metric that matters.
Especially if they can't act more than one character
> I think the same about De Niro
Watch Taxi Driver, Silver Linings Playbook, and Stardust. For a meta-take on that, watch Meet the Parents.
I would never say this about Hoffman or even about people like Farrell, or Sam Rockwell... Somehow I always see De Niro playing De Niro playing something (not a typo, I mean it this way).