The Most Embarrassing Performances Of The 2017 Oscar Nominees

Best Actress

Isabelle Huppert – “Rosebud”
At least until she relents and takes a big paycheck to play the villain in “Mission: Impossible 6” or Aquaman’s mum or something, Isabelle Huppert might be the least tainted of all the performers here — having mostly avoided Hollywood, her biggest shames are probably when a Benoît Jacquot film she made ends up in Un Certain Regard rather than Official Competition at Cannes. Even when she went to Hollywood and starred in a vehicle for Steve Guttenberg (!), it was Curtis Hanson’s “The Bedroom Window,” a surprisingly decent entry in the 1980s erotic-thriller subgenre. So we’d probably suggest her nadir as being one of her earliest roles, in Otto Preminger’s slightly ropey, rather silly thriller “Rosebud.” Not awful but not especially great either, it wastes a very young Huppert’s talents as she plays one of five rich girls kidnapped by the Palestinian Liberation Army from the titular yacht, with Peter O’Toole as a CIA agent and Newsweek reporter trying to free them, and Richard Attenborough (!!!) as the terrorist villain.

Ruth Negga – “Warcraft”
After years of slogging away in roles that didn’t deserve her talents (like a season-long arc in “Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D”), Ruth Negga had a big 2016, with her Oscar nod for “Loving” coming off the back of her terrific turn on AMC’s “Preacher” (becoming, with Joseph Gilgun, the sole reason to watch the show by the end). But there was a bit of a high-profile disappointment too, with Negga among the actors trying to hide their embarrassment in Duncan Jones’ much-maligned video-game-adaptation flop “Warcraft.” As Lady Taria Wrynn, the wife of Dominic Cooper’s King Llane, Negga doesn’t get all that much to do beyond sitting around throne rooms and being vaguely supportive of her husband, but she acquits herself well enough, and at least doesn’t have to get painted green and wear orc fangs like poor Paula Patton or do whatever it is that Ben Foster is doing here.

Natalie Portman – “The Other Boleyn Girl”
The obvious choice when it comes to embarrassing Natalie Portman roles would be the actress’s stiff performance in ‘The Phantom Menace‘ and the other “Star Wars” sequels, but it feels slightly unfair to pick that one out, partly because everyone is bad in those films, and partly because Portman was still a teenager when she shot them. Far worse, we’d argue, is the dreadful “The Other Boleyn Girl,” an overcooked, undernourished historical drama that attracted an inexplicably strong cast — not just Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Eric Bana, but also pre-fame Mark Rylance, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne, Juno Temple and Andrew Garfield. Showing the sisterly rivalry between Mary and Anne Boleyn (Johansson as the former, Portman as the latter, though it would have made more sense the other way around), it’s silly, soapy and surface-level stuff, and features actively bad performances from most of its leads, Portman included.

Emma Stone – “Aloha”
For a great actress with pretty good taste, there was a dispiriting amount to choose from for Emma Stone’s entry here. Not just “Gangster Squad” and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” already on the list thanks to their male leads, but also “Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past,” “Movie 43,” “Magic In The Moonlight” and “Irrational Man.” But the nadir — it’s not the worst movie she’s made, but it’s probably her worst choice — was Cameron Crowe’s “Aloha” in 2015. Somehow more mad, uneven, tin-eared and baffling than even Crowe’s “Elizabethtown,” it sees Stone playing Allison Ng, the upbeat military liaison to and romantic interest for Bradley Cooper’s lead. In case you hadn’t guessed from the surname and the storm of controversy that followed, Stone’s character is meant to be part-Asian, and Stone taking on the role was rightly condemned by pretty much everyone (she later apologized). But even if she wasn’t whitewashing a character, this still would have been a disastrous move: while the film is so mental that it crosses around and becomes curiously likable, it’s still a tonally disastrous, overwritten mess.

Meryl Streep – “The Giver”
It’s sort of hard to embarrass Meryl Streep, we imagine: even when she gives a bad performance, she ends up with an Oscar nomination (as with “August: Osage County”); she rarely takes a job just for the money; and her flops are often among her more interesting movies. A few years ago, though, she made “The Giver,” a film that fits our purposes on every front. It’s unlikely that Streep did it purely for a paycheck — more likely a favor to Jeff Bridges, for whom the film was a longtime passion project. And Philip Noyce’s adaptation of Lois Lowry’s beloved YA dystopian novel isn’t actively awful, just kind of drab and boring and shallow. But Streep, as villain The Chief Elder, fares about as well as when other acclaimed actresses do YA dystopia (Julianne Moore, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, etc. etc.) — i.e. not very well at all, giving a turn that’s oddly forgettable and unexceptional for such a great actress. Still, it does at least allow the posing of the future movie-trivia question “What film stars both Meryl Streep and Taylor Swift?”

Any other least favorite performances you think deserve a shout-out? Let us know in the comments.