I’ll tell you who I think is a good actor, I know you never asked but I follow Stephen Fry on ‘Twitter’ so you’re the lesser in this writer/reader dynamic. Anyway, do you know who I think is a good actor, well no it’s a choice of two… no three… erm no just two oh for god sake! See what you’ve done, I was going fine then until you brought up the stupid little point of who asked who. Anyway, below is a relatively short list of my Top 5 Favourite British Actors.
5. David Threlfall
In at five is David Threlfall, famous for his role as Frank Gallagher in Shameless. He’s in my top five not only for his outstanding performance in Shameless but also for his outstanding performance in Hot Fuzz. Now I bet a few of you didn’t know he was in Hot Fuzz primarily because he both didn’t look like and didn’t sound like his alcoholic, drug abusing and shameless counterpart. In HF he played Martin Blower, the flash amateur actor who got ‘decaffeinated’. I don’t only love his acting but him as a person, in the outtakes for HF there is a scene where he pops a bottle of bubbly and starts pouring it into two glasses, both Threlfall and Lucy Punch pick up the glasses as he says ‘alone at last’. Edgar Wright then shouts over the camera ‘lower’, meaning the two glasses but Threlfall just says ‘alone at last’ in a lower register. Of course he knew what Wright meant which just makes him seem like a down to earth bloke who you would want to have a conversation with.
4. Leigh Francis
Now I may be lynched for saying that I think this ginger, moronic, word slurring star of ITV 2 is a good actor. Even though I despise each and every show he has done I still can’t suppress the fact that he’s both an amazing character and method actor. With every ‘Ooh’ as ‘The Bear’ in ‘Bo’ Selecta!’ to every time he screams ‘Cha ching’ as ‘Keith Lemon’ in ‘Celebrity Juice’ you forget that it’s the same person. He immerses into these characters, when he’s Keith Lemon it’s believable, you would think that this bandaged guy with facial hair was actually a real person and not some genius creation by a man from Leeds.
3. Jack O’Connell
Probably most famous for his role as James Cook in Skins, in my opinion Jack O’Connell is surely one of the greatest current British actors to have the affliction of being northern. Now I don’t know if I am slightly biased because I adore Skins and the fact that he was the only one in the programme to show any evidence of being able to act but still he is a phenomenal actor. Granted he’s not really diverse, well either that or he does get type cast but he always seem to play a loud mouthed young Danny Dyer like role but none the less he does pulls it off extremely well.
2. Stan Laurel
I trust you have all heard of Stan Laurel? If not he was a pioneer of both silent movies as well as talkies along with his American comedy partner Oliver Hardy. In 1927 the double act ‘Laurel and Hardy’ started making films for Hal Roach Studios and went on to be comedy greats. In every film Stan plays bumbling clown who messes up every situation resulting in Oliver Hardy getting frustrated and fussing with his tie. But in real life this couldn’t have been further from the truth. He was often descrbed as the brain behind the duo as he was always pushing for diversity. Now to someone who’s never seen one of their films that might sound quite, well repetitive but trust me, you have to see one of there films, they are phenomenal.
1. Simon Pegg
Now of course at number one it was going to be Simon Pegg, it is impossible for it not to be. Everything Pegg does is simply ‘fried gold’, god I love this man. Also for those who haven’t heard his next instalment in the ‘Blood and ice-cream trilogy’ is called ‘The Worlds End’ and is rumoured to be a sci-fi based alien film as they have already had the ‘red cornetto’, the ‘blue cornetto’ and if true now the ‘green cornetto’.
