Originally Posted by PornMD

Wow...you brought up the other role I was going to bring up, and a point I was ironically going to post about on the NCFOM board on IMDb. Javier won the oscar for that role, and I think that role was an example of an oscar-worthy ROLE...i.e. there'd be a good chance that a significant # of actors who played that role could have at least been nominated if not won simply because it was an awesome character and the standout role in an awesome movie.

That said, he did play it to perfection and was very believable so HE was certainly deserving of the oscar as much as the role itself helped him get it. I honestly haven't seen him in anything else but I would guess that he doesn't NORMALLY play those kinds of roles either which made it that much better.

That's another thing with actors. Like to me, Julia Roberts picks pretty standard roles all the time...her characters may as well be named "Woman" in all her movies because that's her role. On the other hand, a Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman, Brittany Murphy (RIP) or other actress that chooses a variety of good roles will lead me to believe they're better actresses. I can't fault Julia...she has defined that role for herself and gets paid absolute gobs of money so I'm sure she thinks naysayers can suck it, but I'm just not going to respect her that much.

I'll probably get some flack for this, but Brad Pitt to be is an underrated actor...people keep seeing him for his looks and for some roles that he does that are similar to each other, but the fact is the guy picks GREAT movies to be in and generally gets the memorable roles and doesn't generally suck in them. Keanu Reeves is similar and while I think he has had some droll performances, I wouldn't doubt some of that was due to poor direction or script (it's not like he'd have adlibbed "I know kung fu" and I don't think there's any way to believably say that shitty line in that context, lol). He acts respectably in a lot of his more dramatic performances but they just happen to be in the lesser popular movies he's done.