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David Thomson’s 25 Best Spit Nails in the new edition of his New Biographical Dictionary of Film:
Leonardo DiCaprio: “Beginning to look a touch puffy … that touch of fey magic he once had has slipped from his face.”
Ben Affleck: “Boring, complacent and criminally lucky to have got away with everything so far.”
Tom Cruise: “The worst of the spoilt brats of Hollywood.”
Hilary Swank: “Pretty, dull, ordinary and incapable of lifting the film clear of a sanctimonious mud.”
Angelina Jolie: “The carnal embrouchure that is her mouth [could] blind anyone.”
Keira Knightley: “About as interesting as a creme brulee where too much refrigeration has killed flavor with ice burn.”
Hugh Grant: “A refugee from Thirties theatre — or an incipient sneeze looking for a vacant nose.”
Matt Damon: “A squashed and rebuilt face.”
Harrison Ford: “A limited, anxious actor.”
Meryl Streep: “She has problems now with seeming natural.”
Demi Moore: “She has no dramatic sense.”
Bill Nighy: “Somewhere between a scarecrow and a faded aristocrat.”
Richard Gere: “He has been in enough bad films to make one think his career was drawing to a close.”
John Cleese: “This great man is no longer funny.”
Cate Blanchett: “Prone and unconscious for most of Babel; implausible in Notes on a Scandal; again in Elizabeth … unbelievable and undesirable [in] Benjamin Button. Enough?”
Brad Pitt: “Hardly anything he touches now is less than ‘precious’ and ‘awesome.'”
Steve Martin: “Fundamentally averse to acting.”
Bruce Willis: “Makes quantities of commercial junk, where his raised eyebrows soar into the space left by his receding hairline.”
Ralph Fiennes: “Acts as if he would rather be offscreen.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones: “It is a prettiness that tends to fade early.”
Hugh Jackman: “He is hot (I suppose). Now, he just needs to be interesting.”
Nicolas Cage: “If he doesn’t have enough money yet to settle for taking a risk, then what is the point of money?”
Jennifer Aniston: “Her £5-million-a-movie career cannot go on for much longer.”
Michelle Pfeiffer: “Still carries the rather stunned, obedient air of a checkout girl at the supermarket.”
Julie Christie: “Sadly, obvious in her efforts … gawky, self-conscious and lantern-jawed.”
via The Hollywood Reporter
