# Should Keanu Reeves and Kevin Costner be Actors?



## Hollow Man (Aug 12, 2011)

What do you say? Have you ever been convinced by characters they've played. These two male actors often get criticized for being monotone and not convincing as actors? I've always kind of liked the guys myself, but I am not exactly a well trained connoisseur. Maybe I like them because they aren't intense at all usually. 

Can anyone think of actresses that are not too convincing...Kristen Stewart is the first that comes to my mind...Ughhh....I did fall for her in AdventureLand though!


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## Slider (Nov 17, 2009)

Yes.


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## Cossack (Jul 26, 2013)

Keanu Reeves blew my mind in 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'.


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## Cossack (Jul 26, 2013)

Slider said:


> Yes.


I thought that was David Spade for a moment.


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## JustLikeHoney (Sep 8, 2011)

The Matrix was great. The role was originally offered to Will Smith.


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## noz (Dec 7, 2009)

I actually really like Reeves but I understand why he gets criticized so often. He's not exactly "Shakespearean" in his acting. He would suck playing Hamlet, for instance.


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## DAPHNE XO (Jan 16, 2012)

JustLikeHoney said:


> The Matrix was great. The role was originally offered to Will Smith.


I thought his acting was soooo stiff, I did not believe for a second he was in "love" with Trinity.


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## JustLikeHoney (Sep 8, 2011)

Haha "Love". It's been a while since I've seen it, perhaps I'm mixing the screenplay with his acting abilities.


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## Golden Rose (Jun 5, 2014)

I'm now picturing a movie starring Keanu Reeves and Nicolas Cage as the main leads.
The mood whiplash between underacting and overacting would be incredible.


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## LostFavor (Aug 18, 2011)

To be fair, Keanu was playing an everyman-symbolic-Jesus-Christ character. The director probably asked him to play it low and vague because that's the appeal of an everyman character. And if he was already a naturally low-key actor, then I could see it getting compounded and making him look kind of wooden. 

I think he was supposed to be somewhat wooden though. He is sort of the pillar around which the film and the rest of the characters revolve. I mean, look at Batman in the Nolan series; Bale may be a better actor, at least in terms of recognition, but his Batman is largely similar to Keanu's Neo - stoic, isolated, asocial. Though I would call their performances better than Keanu's, the same applies to characters like Raymond Reddington from The Blacklist, both John and Finch from Person of Interest, Walter from Breaking Bad, etc. 

The "blank slate" portrayal makes it easy for audiences to project themselves onto the character; you don't really understand the character - not fully - so he "could be anyone."


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## The Scorched Earth (May 17, 2010)

I was very much impressed by Costner in Dances with Wolves, so yes.


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## Mimic octopus (May 3, 2014)

I'm not a good judge of acting, but most of the films they decide to put themselves in aren't helping to give themselves credibility.


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## Ubuntu (Jun 17, 2011)

I liked Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard and Dances With Wolves. Keanu Reeves is all right but, off the top of my head, I can't think of a movie he's in that I really liked.



> I've always kind of liked the guys myself, but I am not exactly a well trained connoisseur.


I don't think you need some kind of professional training to consider an actor appealing or not.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

I think Keanu gets a lot of flak because he is often cast into very unassuming characters. As @LostFavor pointed out, I think the Wachowski brothers wanted Neo to be low-key the way he is depicted in the film. If that was not what they envisioned they would surely have cast Neo with another actor or asked him to appear differently on the actual screen. So I would say sometimes audience confuse quality of the acting with the conceptualization of the character the directors demanded the actor to actually live out on the screen. If we assume Keanu did the latter, then he is in fact a much more brilliant actor than people give him credit for. He's not known for picking overly expressive roles but he has picked such roles in the past so I am not entirely sure why people think he can't act. He may not fit the idea of an overly expressive actor and if expression is the sole basis on which we judge quality of acting on, then yes, Keanu does suck, but not every person is an overly expressive person either. I think audiences also forget that actors often over-act their roles for the sake of entertainment and that real people, if you will, would not necessarily be as expressive as they appear on the screen. 

Beyond that I have no real opinion on Keanu Reeves and I have seen very few of Costner's films so I can't comment. I do however think that the problem is partially the roles they are cast as, not necessarily their skills as actors. If they were so bad, I don't think they would get cast in the first place. Clearly the directors see some kind of potential in their acting or see something desirable in it, hence they keep getting roles.


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## gestalt (Feb 15, 2011)

On one hand, keanu is an intolerable slaphead. On the other, he plays an addled crackhead to absolute perfection in a scanner darkly : D


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## Hollow Man (Aug 12, 2011)

gestalt said:


> On one hand, keanu is an intolerable slaphead. On the other, he plays an addled crackhead to absolute perfection in a scanner darkly : D


I found Keanu in this to be one of the least "addled" of all of the D-substance addicts! Though he had at least one intense moment that what was out of the norm. He raised his voice a few times in the movie, and I thought he did a good job in it. But, he was detached like usual, but still I felt the emotions and uncertainty of his character. Robert Downey Jr. was a pedantic know-it-all ass in it...he wouldn't stop talking! It was a an enjoyable movie and funny.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

I saw Keanu Reeves in The Devils advocate and he did a pretty good job. I like Kstew.


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## anarchitektur (Feb 11, 2011)

I don't think Reeves is a particularly talented actor, but he is a pretty decent human being... he lives modestly and donates most of the money he makes from his films to charity. So, yes, I think he should continue to be an actor and I wish him nothing but continued success, my indifference toward his movies notwithstanding.


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Costner convinced me as as hard nosed DA after the truth, in JFK. He was good in Field of Dreams and The Untouchables too. He has actually been in a lot of great movies.

I have a hard time taking Samuel Jackson seriously, outside of certain roles.


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## Fievel (Jul 9, 2013)

I mostly remember Costner from _Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves_*. He was decent in that film IMO. I haven't seen any of his other films in years, so I can't really comment. From what I remembered: I did like _the Untouchables_(although he's nothing compared to Robert Stack's classic protrayal of Elliot Ness) and _JFK_ was ok too. I just remember watching _Dances with Wolves_ and _Field of Dreams_ on late night TV when there was nothing else on. 

*I don't want to hear about the accent issue, I honestly don't care.


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