I sometimes wonder how much we lose because we don't look past the superficial. I was thinking about this today in particular because somebody had mentioned somewhere The Station Agent, starring Peter Dinklage. Dinklage is one of my favorite actors: he is stunningly good. But he very rarely gets roles that are really worthy of the quality of his acting -- occasionally, but there's so much potential that I can't help but feel sad occasionally that Hollywood won't step up to the challenge of actually writing roles for actors like Dinklage rather than for the Next Pretty Young Thing. The Station Agent was, for Hollywood, an unusual thing. (It's quite a good movie, if you haven't seen it -- funny and serious and intelligent all at once.)
And, of course, there are actors who probably have the potential but never even get as far as Dinklage. Who would be on your list of actors for whom Hollywood should write more and better?
ADDED LATER: Of course there are probably also excellent actors whose potential in some sense rarely has the opportunity to be fulfilled because they have weird selection of movies. Morgan Freeman has occasionally hit on a really good movie, but just think of how many Freeman movies have as their only significant redeeming point that they have Freeman in them. Freeman himself has actually done pretty well for himself, especially of late, but consider the question opened up to include that type of actor as well -- the ones who are great actors, but only get good roles in bad movies.
