Vote up the most surprising facts about these underrated actors.
How do we define an “underrated” actor or actress? Typically, it’s a character actor who’s appeared in dozens if not hundreds of movies and TV shows without quite reaching the upper echelon of stardom. That’s no knock on these performers’ talents. In fact, they’ve often proven their abilities to carry films with leading roles in independent movies, or they’ve won major awards.
Just like any sampling of the population, performers from this subcategory come from all walks of life, and have all kinds of backstories. Some have famous relatives. Others have shocking medical histories. Still others might have hidden passions or talents. These biographical details might not affect their work on camera, but they’re interesting all the same. Here are 12 underrated actors from the 1990s and 2000s with shocking stories to tell.
Best known for roles like Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day or Max in Thelma and Louise, Stephen Tobolowsky has been appearing in movies and TV since the 1970s.
At one point early in his career he was doing local theater in Hartford, CT, when he got into two life-threatening altercations in on week. First, a man pulled a gun on him in a bar. Two days later, another man stabbed him in a pizza parlor.
Frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator and German-Austrian actor Christoph Waltz is known for playing menacing villains, like the Nazi fugitive hunter Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds. However, this is just one portion of his show business career.
Waltz grew up in Vienna, where his father was a composer and conductor, and as a teenager he attended at least two operas a week. While pursuing his acting career, Waltz also decided to pursue directing operas to feed his “obsession” with music.
In 2013, Waltz directed Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at Belgium's Opera Vlaanderen. Four years later, he returned there to direct Verdi's Falstaff. In 2020, he directed Beethoven's Fidelioat his hometown venue, Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. When directing opera, Waltz insists his performers use a realistic and grounded style more commonly found in theater and film.
New Zealander Melanie Lynskey's breakout role was in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, and since then she's appeared in dozens of TV series from Yellowjackets to The Last of Us to Castle Rock.
As her husband Jason Ritter revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lynskey also suffers from misophonia, which is specific sounds are perceived more intensely. For Lynskey, the worst sound is smacking lips. "They hear it 20 times louder than you do and it drives them insane," Ritter explained.
Judy Greer has been in more than 150 movies and TV shows, many of them critically acclaimed comedies. As she told The Guardian, she's often recognized for her role on Arrested Development as Kitty Sanchez, the flashing, spring break-loving Bluth company receptionist as well as George Sr.'s (Jeffrey Tambor) mistress and criminal co-conspirator.
Specifically, people flash her. As she told the show's creator Mitch Hurwitz, “Oh, yeah, thanks by the way for all the people flashing their t*** at me all the time.” He responded, “What? Do people do that?” To which she fired back, "Yes people f****** do that. That's all they do. I get flashed all the time." It's mostly men."
Sam Rockwell has turned up in dozens of comedies and dramas over his career, which includes an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. He also suffered a serious hand injury in a car accident, which required a total reconstruction of his appendage.
I flipped a car. I think the same thing sort of happened to Shia LaBeouf, except his hand was hurt worse than mine, but my fingers were crushed and then reconstructed.
In 2015, Juliette Lewis shared an anecdote about her Cape Fear co-star Robert DeNiro. In 1994, three years after filming Cape Fear, Lewis ran into DeNiro at a bar, where DeNiro complimented Lewis on her recent role in the dark crime comedy Natural Born Killers.
A 20-year-old Lewis confidently responded that she'd improvised 90% of her lines. This didn't impress DeNiro, according to Lewis:
Bob looked at me sternly and said, "Oh no. No don't ever disrespect the writer. Don't you ever disrespect the writer or your director. Ever." In that one moment I realized so much, I felt like I grew 5 yrs. I never made that mistake again. And I am so thankful he took the time to school a very young J Lewis. A lot of teachers I'd reject what they'd say being so prideful and self protecting. But when he said it, I knew exactly what he meant! Grace and respect. Goes a long way! He's a class act!
