Comments on: "You're Adam, a five-year-old boy sneaking your pet rat into your seven-year-old sister's underwear drawer."

"You're Adam, a five-year-old boy sneaking your pet rat into your seven-year-old sister's underwear drawer."

Captain Cardanthian! — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:23:52 -0800

In Character: Actors Acting is a series of photos featuring Jeff Goldblum, Jane Lynch, Laurence Fishburne, Geoffrey Rush and 26 other actors reacting to short character prompts from photographer Howard Schatz.

By: Capt. Renault

Capt. Renault — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:30:32 -0800

Volume Two features Oskar Werner and Buster Keaton.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:33:21 -0800

"Actors Grotesquely Overacting" seems like a more accurate subtitle. It's a cute series, but it really says something about the direction and the choice of actors when Leguizamo is the one making the subtle faces.

By: Joe Beese

Joe Beese — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:36:29 -0800

Asking Brooke Shields to act seems cruel somehow.

By: amethysts

amethysts — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:38:32 -0800

I liked Brooke Shields, it seemed to be the first (or one of the first) where they weren't just making a big outrageous face.

By: Captain Cardanthian!

Captain Cardanthian! — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:38:47 -0800

"Actors Grotesquely Overacting" seems like a more accurate subtitle. I think that's why I like it. Some of the actors do really realistic, convincing portrayals (Mariska Hargitay nailed it, IMO), and some of them are just really goofy. It's great seeing who took which approach.

By: lalex

lalex — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:40:32 -0800

The middle photo of John Goodman actually made me tear up a bit.

By: bwg

bwg — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:41:16 -0800

I really liked Laurence Fishburne's and Jane Lynch's contributions.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:41:34 -0800

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Who knew that Laurence Fishburne had facial expressions beyond "glower"? And I like to imagine Ian McShane's instructions for the middle pose were "You're Mel Gibson."

By: bwg

bwg — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:43:11 -0800

Oh, and ... Malkovich!

By: djb

djb — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:43:12 -0800

Laurence Fishburne will haunt your dreams.

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:45:02 -0800

> The middle photo of John Goodman actually made me tear up a bit. A friend of mine who is a film maker have a contest of "saddest scene ever" that crops up whenever we end up riffing about characters (we must have created and forgotten a few hundred at this point). The following sentence has trumped almost all the ones I can remember recently: "You're departing the nursing home where your wife resides; it is your first visit in which she didn't recognize you."

By: DU

DU — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:46:20 -0800

More like Actors...ACTING!

By: FelliniBlank

FelliniBlank — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:52:19 -0800

Mariska Hargitay is clearly someone who actually notices what real people look like at moments like these. So many of the others seem to be, "This is what you'd think someone in X situation should look like." Jeff Goldblum is great as ever, and the Leguizamo head-licked four-year-old expression is perfect.

By: amethysts

amethysts — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:52:49 -0800

" More like Actors...ACTING!"

By: The World Famous

The World Famous — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:58:07 -0800

More like Actors...ACTING! Needs more Jon Lovitz. (Everything needs more Jon Lovitz.)

By: Horace Rumpole

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:00:39 -0800

Huh, I thought sure this was a double of this, but apparently not.

By: hincandenza

hincandenza — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:35:14 -0800

Cannot Open Page Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects Occurred

The above is my William Carlos Williams-inspired poem to websites that still haven't figured out how to make their forced "mobile version" redirects work with an actual mobile device. I'll bet the OP is fantastic too, but I'll never know while using such a primitive, backwards method of browsing the web as an iPhone 3GS.

By: tumid dahlia

tumid dahlia — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:47:11 -0800

Just going on record as saying that I love Ian McShane and will watch any piece of shit he appears in, and that includes frincing (frowning/wincing) my way through the godawful Pillars Of The Earth miniseries, essentially a ye olde Mills & Boon novel writ large.

By: quiet coyote

quiet coyote — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:59:44 -0800

How come Elisabeth Moss got to change?!

By: you're a kitty!

you're a kitty! — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:06:57 -0800

Laurence Fishburne's are just great, but I gotta admit, my strongest reaction was OH GOOD GOD I LOVE HUGH LAURIE.

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:07:59 -0800

The way these were composed reminded me of the Three-Headed Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This effect was particularly pronounced in the Ricky Gervais shot.

By: rmmcclay

rmmcclay — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:14:47 -0800

I'm so out of touch; I only recognized about half of those actors.

By: wandering steve

wandering steve — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:16:21 -0800

Needs more Jon Lovitz. Needs more Calculon.

By: Dr. Zira

Dr. Zira — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:20:21 -0800

Ken Jeong for the win.

By: fairytale of los angeles

fairytale of los angeles — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:55:13 -0800

"Laurence Fishburne! Show me your WAR FACE!!!!"

By: Songdog

Songdog — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:35:32 -0800

Hope Davis' jealous thirteen-year-old is excellent.

By: sonascope

sonascope — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:11:33 -0800

My late father would have looked at a few of these, gone beet red, and yelled "mugging is not acting, goddammit!" However, just adding Robin Williams to the selection would have thrown off the bell curve considerably, making the worst offenders look better by comparison. Heck, we could add Jack Nicholson at the other end of the spectrum and titled it Left: Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson, Center: Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson, and Right: Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson and neatly balanced out the whole thing. Neat trick, though.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:53:45 -0800

That series works better if you imagine that every one of them is doing different stages of their O-face.

By: biscotti

biscotti — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:18:39 -0800

David Strathairn ftw. Especially the first one, a perfect combination of shock, horror, nausea and a touch of titillation.

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:43:39 -0800

How come Elisabeth Moss got to change?! I bet she's sleeping with Don Draper.

By: LMGM

LMGM — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:08:03 -0800

Hugh Laurie's last prompt is awesome (even without the image).

By: homunculus

homunculus — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:42:24 -0800

Speaking of Laurence Fishburne: Thurgood

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 07:31:03 -0800

Going through these again, I just realized that Michael Douglas' last shot is part of the same scenario as Chloe Sevigny's. I swear I would pay cash money to watch Michael Douglas as some guy who thinks that he's Chloe Sevigny's kid sister.

By: Solon and Thanks

Solon and Thanks — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:06:44 -0800

These are great. I think the best are all of Leguizamo's, Schwartzman's, and Davis's. I also love Hugh Laurie's smug expression and Whoopi's Barbara Walters impression. You can see all of them on one page here.

By: klausness

klausness — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:37:54 -0800

Plenty of overacting here. At first glance, I thought the first of Hope Davis's was particularly over-the-top. But then I read the instructions for it.