Actors who work too much

Now, I'm not talking about 'character actors' along the lines of Bob Gunton, Ed Lauter or the great Peter Jason.  I'm talking about the motherfuckers who are on the magazines at the checkout every week..

The first and foremost for me is Johnny Depp.  He's a seemingly nice fellow and a pretty good actor...problem is he's in a movie every six months.  His films have gone from "Johnny Depp as..." to "JOHNNY DEPP IN..." .

There's no break.  There's no chance to let a role sink in and stop seeing Depp and start seeing the character.  It's like taking a cumulative dose of Xanax, eventually you get bleary and outright disconnected. And then you have the element where it starts to sabotage a movie right out of the gate.  PUBLIC ENEMIES being a great example.  The film was crippled (as far as I'm concerned) from the get-go by the endless attention to Depp rather than the film itself.  He's more marketing tool than actor.  I've watched folks like Chris Cooper go from breakout lead potential to relegation in the 'character actor' tier* while Mr 21 Jump Street does everything but anchor my local news.

The guy needs to take a holiday or something.  Give folks a chance to genuinely pine for a performance.  This isn't the 16th century where the pool of talented actors was relatively small.  Sometimes people need a little time to fall in love with an actor all over again.  (I'm thinking of the people who will eventually suffer the ennui of too much Danny Trejo )

* and I could say the same about another fave of mine, Nick Mancuso.

Cage certainly came to my mind right after Depp.  While I can understand Depp's draw and marketability, I'm a bit mystified by studio efforts to promote films simply on Cage's name.  There was a huge ass poster on the side of the AMC by me of some Cage which was simply his last name and his giant goddamn face.  Yet for the life of me I can't remember the movie!
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin Clark 

Much as I enjoy the guy, I worry about Seth Rogen qualifying here.

I can see this, but he still has a chance to throttle it back.  As with Depp (and Cage to an arguable degree), he's a pretty talented guy and I'd hate to see him saturate the market and lose that edge. 

I use Jack Black as a yardstick for this kind of thing.  I joke with my wife (disgustingly huge Glee fan) all the time that, to me, someone like Jane Lynch is in danger of 'Jack Blacking' herself right out of relevance.