Tuesday Top Ten: Weirdos

Let's venture where few actors dare to go... or stay, rather. Many thespians go to strange places onscreen but few remain in those outer regions for several films in a row or radiate that quite naturally as a celebrity. This list is dedicated to Angelina Jolie who used to be magnetically weird despite her beauty but is now a classy world-famous humanitarian and earth mother. Shame.

Top Ten Weirdo Actors

This list does not include Tom Cruise because.... too easy.

10 Rossy DePalma -She's not the only bizarre looking person on the list but she's the only one who is here because of how strange the mug is. And yet it's made for the screen, too, don't you think? So pleased that Almodovar has cast her for the sixth time (She'll be in his 2009 feature Broken Hugs. I like to think of this director/muse pair as the modern Spanish counterpart to 70s era Shelley Duvall & Robert Altman. Would Rossy be too much to handle in a lead role? Try Pedro, try.

P.S. Has anyone sniffed her perfume? What ever does it smell like?

09 Johnny Depp -I almost didn't include him because of the familiarity. His weirdness is Disney marketable now: cute, safe, beloved. But then again it doesn't feel artificial, or like a costume he puts on for show the way Norma Jean could famously flip her switch to access Marilyn Monroe. One only has to consider how quickly it came to him --his first Burton film (Edward Scissorhands) and the way the delicious 'beautiful people' years with Winona Ryder always had a gothic undercurrent and sense of humor "Wino Forever" -- and that it never left again. Defecting to France, Captain Jack Sparrow, and that sartorial sense that seems to be composed of equal parts 70s pimp, 90s grunge rocker and Batman's The Joker, all of it just underlines the genuine strangeness.

08 Isabelle Huppert -She's either the greatest actress who ever lived or she's insane, possibly both. I came to this conclusion after watching The Piano Teacher and 8 Women in short succession. Ma Mére only confirmed it. Please don't leave me alone in a room with her.

07 Daniel Day-Lewis -If there is a God and that whole favorite Christian saying 'don't hide your light under a bushel' applies to life in general than God is very mad at DDL for working so infrequently. But he's on this list because he makes his own shoes and because we suspect God is actually more Daniel-Fearing than the other way 'round.

06 Tilda Swinton -Subversive. Brilliant. Iconoclastic. Odd in all of the most inspiring enviable ways. Plus the filmography is to die for ...any artistically bent actor should be green with envy.

05 Vincent Gallo. Maybe the people who agree to (ahem) co-star with him are even crazier.

04 John Malkovich. Charlie Kauffman, screenwriter extraordinaire, has made many perceptive and bizarrely witty choices in his oeuvre. None are greater than putting a portal inside this actor's head for Being John Malkovich. Sure, you could have creative fun for hours imagining variations of this film with a different name following the Being... [it becomes a whole 'nother film --try it], but no actor could have possibly fit better into the inimitably odd demands of this head trip.

"Malkovich! Malkovitch! Malkovitch!"

03 Crispin Glover. Perhaps an obvious choice but even when he goes entirely mainstream (Charlie's Angels or Back to the Future f'rinstance) he's decidedly off. Couldn't quite call myself a "fan" but I do at least cherish all three "Groovin' Larry/Gary"s in The Beaver Trilogy. I seriously do. Have any of you seen it? You won't soon forget it.

02 Juliette Lewis. Many actors dream of being rock stars (and vice versa) but Juliette is one of the only ones who does both convincingly. She was a freak from the get go: an emancipated minor at 14, shacking up with Brad Pitt at 17, Bo Derek braids to the Oscars after salaciously sucking Robert DeNiro's thumb in Cape Fear. She's given so many fine and disturbed performances. Her greatest is in Natural Born Killers in which she's both scarier and funnier than Woody Harrelson with her possessed mood switches and jumping bean mayhem. But the rosetta stone to her public persona onscreen is "Faith" in Strange Days (1995), in which she gives half of a great performance, seems a little wasted and is also possessed by rock n roll dreaming while she's channeling PJ Harvey on stage.


She's one of a kind. Why is Hollywood so scared to use her properly? She's only 34 but she hasn't had a decent movie role since 2000. Get with it casting directors. Time is a wastin'.

01 Christopher Walken. Whether he's imagining deadly car crashes with numb conviction (Annie Hall), playing Russian roulette (The Deer Hunter), dancing in an empty hotel in one of the best music videos ever made (Weapon of Choice), sexing up John Travolta (Hairspray), or badly in need of dental hygiene (Sleepy Hollow) he's always defiantly joyfully weird. Well done.

Would love to hear your lists. Obviously oddity is in the eye of the beholder. There were many others I almost included instead like Sharon Stone [check this out. tee hee] or any proselytizing Scientologists. There's a whole other list to be made of faux-weird ...people we suspect may be deeply and utterly suburban despite outward appearances to the contrary.

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