Saga The most underrated Star Wars actors to you?

Any actor from the prequels who is not Ewan Mcgregor or Christopher Lee.

 

Come on, you know it's true.

Seriously though, there's a lot of actors in the saga that I felt were severely underrated. I'll name some from each of the movies:

TPM - Oliver Ford Davies (Sio Bibble) and Hugh Quarshie (Captain Panaka)

AOTC - Alethea McGrath (Jocasta Nu) and Pernilla August (Shmi Skywalker)

ROTS - Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa) and Silas Carson (Ki-Adi-Mundi) (that look when the clones turn their guns on him gets me every time)

ANH -Phil Brown and Shelagh Fraser (Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru) and Richard LeParmentier (Admiral Motti)

TESB - Kenneth Colley (Admiral Piett) and Julian Glover (General Veers)

ROTJ - Michael Pennington (Moff Jerjerrod) and Caroline Blakiston (Mon Mothma)

 

His performance was good, my main issue is that he was always given the short end of the dialogue stick of the three main leads in the PT. And he did his best with the not best dialogue, and for that, I will always give him credit.

 

Got to be Hamill for me. I think he gets the balance just right in every episode. Can't wait to see what he does with an older, wiser Luke in TFA. I'm imagining a ROTJ Luke turned up to 11

Got to give a shout out to Frank Oz too. Just like Hamill, many voice actors get overlooked. His voice, combined with his puppet mastery brings so much life to Yoda... excellent!

 

Tamuera Morrison.

Where's the love for this guy?

 

Natalie Portman, I feel, always gets a very unreasonable amount of hate. Jimmy Smits' performance was one I really liked. I think he should've gotten a bit more screen time.

I agree with what Jo Lucas said above about Temuera Morrison, if only for how much anger is directed towards him for voicing Boba in TESB.

As for the OT, I don't think anyone's particularly underrated

EDIT: And, of course, Liam Neeson who is characterized as "bland" and "stern."

 

Ronald Falk as Dexter Jettster in AOTC. Makes a great impression in just a single scene. I especially love his line, "I should think that you Jedi would have more respect for the difference between knowledge and.... wisdom."

 

Natalie Portman. I absolutely love her as Padme and don't see why everyone dislikes her so much.

 

I may get a lot of flak for this, but I think Hayden is underrated.

 

He is, indeed.

 

Hayden, hands down. Jake and Ahmed Best are up there as well.

 

Hayden and Natalie. Both of them were stuck saying that horrible dialogue during those love scenes. As well, people seem to forgot how good of a job Hayden portrayed Vader when he was angry.
Also, Ray Park, the guy who portrayed Maul. He does not get a lot of attention for that excellent portrayal of a frightening sith lord.

 

Oh Smits was a fantastic actor for bail for instance this clip it shows so much when he says so it is.

 

I feel like a lot of the actors who played smaller parts are underrated: Hugh Quarshie, Pernilla August, Kenneth Colley, and Julian Glover are all great in their roles. Jimmy Smits and Jake Lloyd are also underrated.

 

I would have to say Matt Doran - Aussie actor who played Elan Sleazebaggano (Deathsticks guy). I knew him when we were kids.

 

Christensen. Confession scene is one of the best big drama moments in the series, and in general I think he did a great job of sprinkling in hints of both Vader and Luke inside Anakin's more pronounced character traits stemming from his isolation and unrest. In the morning meditation scene on Naboo it's almost eerie how effectively he channels Vader on the star destroyer deck. And during the opera house conversation my mind always simultaneously plays through Luke and Yoda speaking in the Dagobah hut.

 

It's refreshing to see this perspective on Hayden's position in Star Wars. I've always appreciated his performance as Anakin. He truly had a difficult job. The burden of playing the young Darth Vader... one of the greatest challenges in movie history (I'm a SW fan obviously, so I'm biased.. but still). I don't think there are many actors who could've done a better job, given the circumstances.

Most people seem to forget that George Lucas wanted Anakin to be a very vulnerable and highly flawed character. This can explain why so many people dislike Hayden, simply because they expected Anakin to be a very honorable character - the hero with a heart of gold. This was never Lucas's intention and Hayden simply portrayed Anakin the way Lucas wanted him to be portrayed. Lucas has stated earlier that he was kind of disappointed that Vader had become such an iconic/cool character, because that was never what he wanted - Vader was meant to more like a pathetic character; someone who had lost everything - including himself.

I think Hayden realized this vision very well.

 

I really really like Watto, which I know is weird, because I shouldn't like him. But he has this sort of slimey appeal like maybe there's a bit of good in him under all the dirt... also the voice actor did a great job switching between the languages he's speaking and actually inflecting his voice and accenting it, like someone fluent in another language would... not just pronouncing gibberish in your normal voice the way ep I Anakin and ep VI C3p0 do. I don't know the actors name, but I would elect whoever played Watto,great job, great character.

 

If there is anyone who is underrated within the cast of the Star Wars movies it is Hayden Christensen. Now, before you blast me and tell everyone that you shot first, the man is not a bad actor. The scripts for episode II and III, III being the best out of the prequels for me at least, could have been written better. Lucas did a really good job in portraying anakin in a way where it is no different from watching an angsty teen drama. But is that really Hayden Christensen's fault? He really had no choice in terms of the decisions made by Lucas in Anakin's portrayal. Shattered Glass was a terrific movie and Hayden acted superbly in it so he is not a bad actor. Also the moment that Hayden truly shined in the prequels was the scene when he is in the Jedi council chamber and looking out into the city with Padme doing the same from her apartment. That scene had so much subtle depth and emotion and there were no words at all. I still have people, who are hardcore OTs, that say that was probably one of the most well shot scenes in the movie, which is alot coming from OTs lol. But, in light of rumors that he may return for episode VIII, which has been circulating for a while, I dont want him to return. The Chosen One prophecy was fulfilled and Anakin is one with the force. I mean sure come back as a force ghost but do not let him physically come back. It would nullify what he did at ROTJ.

Anyway, Hayden is someone, who I felt, could have been a great Anakin had he had better writers for his character. The way Lucas portrayed him kind of made me go "really? that's anakin?" after listening from almost everyone in the OT of what kind of person he was. Sure he was heroic in the prequels but they really could have portrayed him better in II because that was just hard to watch.

 

I'm also a big fan of Pernilla August as Shmi. She had some background doing films for television for Ingmar Bergman, so her solemn warmth fits into the character well. You can tell Shmi knows that there are big things on the horizon for her son in TPM and has long accepted that it's only a matter of time before they're separated. "You can't stop the change, not anymore than you can stop the suns from setting," is such a great line, one that shows that the loss of Shmi's influence on her son was a major catalyst for his ultimate fall.

 

So many, so I'll just put three down.
Michael Carter
Peter Mayhew
Anthony Daniels

 

Mark Hamill. Luke was a little shallow in ANH, but that worked to emphasize his growth in the later movies, especially in his training scenes with Yoda and the showdown with Vader and the Emperor.

 

The actor's name is Andy Secombe, and I completely agree! Aside from Liam Neeson and Ian McDiarmid, I thought Secombe's portrayal of Watto was the best performance in TPM. As stubborn and as flawed as Watto was, you could tell he had a heart somewhere, and the voice work was an integral part of that.

There's a lot of good picks in this thread! Jimmy Smits, Pernilla August, and even Kenneth Colley definitely rank near the top for me. It's odd how some of those talents just fly under the radar, especially in the PT.

 

I definitely agree with Peter Cushing. Along with Alec Guinness, I’d argue that he actually gives the most polished performance in the original movie.

I agree that Hayden Christensen had the hardest part, but, to me, that makes his failure to be convincing in the role all the more galling. I don’t know whether it’s inexperience on Christensen’s part or bad direction on Lucas’s part, but he’s just not very good in these movies. I know he’s been good in other movies, like SHATTERED GLASS, so I lean towards bad direction (Lucas is notorious for not being an actors’ director). He has a few moments where he’s OK (mostly whenever he has no dialogue), but the vast majority of his line deliveries are just awful. Like I’ve said before, the quiet intensity of someone like a young Al Pacino (combined with better writing) would’ve done wonders for this part.

 

This. I have always felt that of comparing to the dialogue the other main characters in the PT were given, his were the most basic, and toughest to deliver. I sometimes felt that if his dialogue simply had a few more lines before or after whatever he said, or if it was just said differently, the message/delivery would be much more convincing/clearer.

That being said, I feel that Hayden did a great job of portraying exactly the type of Anakin Skywalker we were supposed to See: an emotional teenager with an unstable personality, and later an overly ambitious adult with an obsessive way of dealing with problems. There was an emotional Vulnerability about him that IMO made his turn to the Darkside believable.

Not to mention, in ROTS – I challenge any actor to handle his turn to the Darkside - and especially the immolation scene – better than Hayden did. I was quite convinced of his anger and hatred in that film, and that is what they were going for.

I would call that "mission accomplished. "