The Most Overqualified Performances in ’90s Action Movies

The 1990s: A Decade Overflowing with Action Movies. Whether they were great, mediocre, or forgettable, every week brought a new tale of a rugged hero battling against the odds to thwart the theft of nuclear weapons or a diabolical villain hell-bent on world domination. Amongst the mix, the best and worst boasted performances by actors who seemed too talented for the roles they inhabited.

These actors might be viewed as either slumming it or finding something uniquely appealing in these gloriously cheesy action flicks. Perhaps they simply relished the chance to portray larger-than-life villains alongside heavyweights like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise.

So, who among them delivered surprisingly polished performances, and who was just in it for the ’90s action money?

Raul Julia – ‘Street Fighter’

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Raul Julia left us far too soon. He passed in 1994 from complications due to stomach cancer, but he never stopped working. His earliest roles were in plays like Macbeth and Othello at the New York Shakespeare Festival, but he soon moved onto Broadway. Even his biggest performances are tinged with subtleties that were clearly learned on the stage.Most audience members know Julia from his role as Gomez in The Addams Family, but this was a guy who loved to work – hence his appearance as M. Bison in the bonkers AF Street Fighter movie. He pops on screen in a way no one else does in this film, and when he delivers his truly hokey dialogue, it’s so much fun. The knowledge Julia was ill during the filming of Street Fighter makes his stellar performance all the more impressive. He’s not just acting circles around his co-stars – he’s in another film entirely.
Anthony Hopkins – ‘The Mask of Zorro’
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a two-time Academy Award winner, and a straight-up knight, Anthony Hopkins is the kind of actor who makes everything he’s in appear a little more prestigious than it actually is. That being said, it’s still incredibly strange he plays the elder Zorro in one of the goofiest action movies of the ’90s.
It’s frankly weird Hopkins agreed to be in a big-screen adaptation of a forgotten TV serial, but the guy is firing on all cylinders as an elder statesman of swashbuckling. He’s clearly having fun in this movie and somehow manages to outshine peak-hot Antonio Banderas. That’s no small feat.

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Willem Dafoe – ‘Speed 2: Cruise Control’
Willem Dafoe may be the strangest action star of the modern era. Trained in the world of experimental theater, Dafoe’s earliest on-screen performances are full of snakelike menace. He’s not the kind of actor whom audiences expect to see in a big-budget sequel to a major ’90s action movie. That’s why he’s perfect as John Geiger in Speed 2.
On the whole, Speed 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor, but Dafoe’s role as an unhinged former employee of a cruise company who steals a ship so he can rob its vault is about as perfect as you can get. Dafoe plays this role in a way that’s anything but straight. The character, Geiger, has copper poisoning and has to undergo leech treatments twice a day, which means multiple scenes feature Dafoe writhing with leeches in a tub. It’s brilliant. He’s the reason to watch Speed 2.
Alan Rickman – ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’
Alan Rickman is easily the most overqualified actor to ever appear in an action movie. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a Tony Award nominee, and a BAFTA Award winner, he can handle any kind of character he’s saddled with.
It makes sense when he shows up in Die Hard and the Harry Potter films – those movies are full of accomplished thespians who are having fun playing in genre films, but Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a unique piece of cinema. This mind-boggling take on the Robin Hood story is clearly supposed to be a vehicle for Kevin Costner, but the film orbits around Rickman’s absurd take on the Sheriff of Nottingham. Rickman plays the sheriff like he’s a constantly exploding nuclear bomb. So, the scenery is safe from being chewed while he’s on screen. It’s a shame no one can keep up with him (well, except for Sean Connery in the single scene in which he appears).
Al Pacino – ‘Dick Tracy’
Al Pacino’s earliest works, from The Panic in Needle Park to the first two Godfather films, are known for subtle performances. That all changed in the 1980s with Cruising and Scarface. Pacino got big and loud, but he still managed to match the tone for his films. The same can’t be said for Dick Tracy, one of the strangest big-budget projects of the 20th century.
Directed by Warren Beatty and starring Madonna, Dick Tracy features Pacino playing Alphonse “Big Boy” Caprice at a full 10. If he could go to 20, that’s where he’d be. It’s weird enough Dustin Hoffman and Mandy Patinkin are also in Dick Tracy, but neither of them are acting like screaming lunatics. If Beatty revealed Pacino did nothing but drink espresso and gobble Adderall before each day, it would make perfect sense. But here’s the thing – it’s impossible to take your eyes off of him. By the end of the movie, it’s clear Pacino understands he’s playing a caricature and everyone else is underplaying their role.
Tommy Lee Jones – ‘Batman Forever’
Tommy Lee Jones got his start on Broadway, but even if he jumped straight to the silver screen, he would have been an actor whose appearance screams gravitas. He’s an intense on-screen presence who can take a pulpy film like Under Siege or The Fugitive and make it feel important.
Still, it’s inconceivable he plays Two-Face in Batman Forever opposite Jim Carrey as the Riddler. By all accounts, Jones isn’t a fan of comic book movies or working with an actor like Carrey, but even if that’s the case, he still turns in a performance for the ages. Jones chews scenery. He performs both sides of Two-Face’s persona as if they’re two different characters, and he never turns away from being particularly unhinged. Maybe Jones should act in movies he actively hates more often.
David Warner – ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze’
David Warner got his start as a member of the Royal Court Theatre in 1962 before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company years later. He’s played Hamlet multiple times, and he’s considered one of the most brilliant British actors of his generation. That’s why it’s unexpected when he pops up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze as a scientist who helps the turtles create an antidote for further mutations.
Warner is punching so hard below his weight class in the movie it’s almost like staring into the uncanny valley when he’s on screen. Watching Warner deliver lines to animatronic turtles is a genuine thrill even if they’re the kinds of lines you’d expect to hear in a ’50s B-movie. The filmmakers could have booked anyone for this role, but tapping Warner to play a scientist in a few small scenes is a signal to older members of the audience they know how silly the entire endeavor is.
Anthony Quinn – ‘Last Action Hero’
Anthony Quinn led one of the most fascinating lives in cinematic history. Born in Mexico, Quinn moved to the United States where he boxed professionally and worked under Frank Lloyd Wright. Then he booked it to Hollywood to take any role he could find and went on to win two Academy Awards and earn multiple BAFTA nominations. He appears in some of the most renowned movies of the 20th century, but he also had no problems showing up in the Hercules series, as well as the very meta Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Last Action Hero.
Quinn has a really interesting role in Last Action Hero as Tony Vivaldi, the main antagonist of the film inside the film, until his role is changed because of the appearance of Danny Madigan. Vivaldi is a powerful Sicilian crime lord, and Quinn plays him like he’s a character in The Godfather. It would be funny if he weren’t so good in this role. The guy gives it his all, just like the rest of the heavy hitters in this movie, and that’s why it still slaps.
Vanessa Redgrave – ‘Mission: Impossible’
If there’s an award to be handed out for acting, Vanessa Redgrave has it. She’s swimming in Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Emmys, and even a Tony. This is all to say she’s extremely overqualified for her role as Max, a red-herring arms dealer in Mission: Impossible.
As Max, Redgrave brings gravitas to a pulpy adaptation of a ’60s spy show. Brian De Palma and Tom Cruise are great, but they’re both known for big, splashy films, not their accolades. Redgrave brings subtlety and nuance to what could have been a standard arms dealer role. Her scenes with Cruise slow the film down, but not in a way that ruins the pace. She somehow finds a way to help the rest of the film breathe while maintaining the necessary tension of a spy thriller. If there’s a movie that’s just Redgrave and Cruise to be cut out of this film, then we want to see it.
Nigel Hawthorne – ‘Demolition Man’
Sir Nigel Hawthorne isn’t just a knight who once tread the boards. During his lifetime, he won a BAFTA and a Tony, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He also plays the evil Dr. Raymond Cocteau in Demolition Man, the movie where Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes play criminals released from cryo-prison who go to war with one another on the streets of future Los Angeles.
Demolition Man rocks. It surpasses being a guilty pleasure movie and becomes a truly magical thing that has no right to be as good as it is. Some of that comes from the ridiculous premise, but Hawthorne brings real gravitas to his role as a villain who wants the world to be nice and polite. Anyone else would ham this role up a little too much, but Hawthorne laces the character with the subtle menace of a politician hiding his crimes. It’s a brilliant performance in a movie that’s otherwise solid B-movie cheese.
F. Murray Abraham – ‘Last Action Hero’
Last Action Hero is full of so many astounding performers it’s genuinely shocking. Charles Dance is the main baddie. Tom Noonan is scary AF, and Academy Award winner Art Carney makes his final film appearance, but it’s F. Murray Abraham’s appearance that’s absolutely mind-boggling. This is an actor whose nominations have their own Wikipedia page.
Primarily a theater actor early on in his career, Abraham is known for his intense performances that feel like they’re coming out of the screen. He’s received awards for his work in productions by Anton Chekhov and his performance in Amadeus. When he pops up in Last Action Hero as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s partner, it’s truly unbelievable.
The filmmakers behind Last Action Hero are aware of Abraham’s over-the-top performance in this film – they even mention his role in Amadeus. Not only are they in on the joke, but they’re clearly excited about how much life he brings to what could have been a straightforward action film.
Charlton Heston – ‘True Lies’
Charlton Heston is the man. There’s no way around it. In his lifetime, he starred in more than 100 movies, and in each of them, he oozed confidence. Maybe that’s because he attended Northwestern University on a drama scholarship, before producing the first Julius Caesar film to feature sound.
Whenever Heston is on screen, he commands respect – the guy was Moses and Ben-Hur. He projects the kind of on-screen presence that makes audiences want to follow him into the jaws of death, which is why it’s so wild he basically performs a cameo in True Lies.
Heston plays Spencer Trilby, the head of a US intelligence agency named Omega Sector, which is already pulpy enough. But he does it with an eye patch and the kind of bravado usually reserved for films that aren’t farcical takes on the superspy genre. When Heston growls lines like, “This isn’t blowing wind up my skirt, gentlemen,” you want to laugh, but you also really hope Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold can find some information that’s going to blow wind up his skirt. Heston is such an overachiever he turns what has to be less than two minutes on screen into the “Charlton Heston Show.”
Jon Voight – ‘Anaconda’
Between 1969 and 1985, Jon Voight took home 11 major acting awards, and he was nominated for nearly double that number. Even if he stopped acting at the end of the ’70s, he’d still have more untouchable performances in his filmographies than some actors will ever attain. Thank goodness he didn’t hang it up because audiences are able to experience his performance as Paul Serone, the snake man in Anaconda.
If you’ve somehow slept on Anaconda, it’s basically Creature from the Black Lagoon but with a giant snake, Jennifer Lopez, and Ice Cube (also Owen Wilson and Eric Stoltz – this movie is stacked). Voight’s take on Serone is a really strange mix of carnie and what he assumes someone from South America sounds like.
On first viewing, it looks like Voight is just cheesing it up because he’s in a B-movie, but once you really take into consideration his abilities, it’s clear Voight is embodying the role of Serone. There’s no Voight in this performance – it’s all Serone.
Lance Henriksen – ‘Stone Cold’
A graduate of the Actors Studio, Lance Henriksen brings great pathos to every single one of his roles – even those in genre films. He has impressive performances in films like Aliens, Near Dark, and The Quick and the Dead, but all of those movies are critically acclaimed. The same can’t be said for the biker action flick Stone Cold.
Essentially a star vehicle for former football player Brian Bosworth, Stone Cold features Henriksen playing Chains Cooper, the malicious leader of a substance-dealing biker gang that’s planning to slay a federal judge. Henriksen is mystifying as a long-haired, skinny biker who rules his gang with an iron fist. He takes what should have been a pulpy role and raises it to the level of Shakespeare.

Anthony Quinn – ‘Last Action Hero’