10 Famous Actors Who Only Ever Managed One Legitimately Great Performance

2) Burt Reynolds In Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson has form in helping middling actors briefly figure out how to act – Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, Tom Cruise in Magnolia, Eric Roberts in Inherent Vice. In Boogie Nights, Anderson encouraged the frustratingly inconsistent Mark Wahlberg to deliver his defining cinematic turn, while in the same film he got Burt Reynolds to give his one and only great performance, to Oscar-nominated effect.

An eight-time Razzie-nominated actor, Reynolds has never justified his star status as well as he does in Boogie Nights, in which he plays the porn baron Jack Horner like a paternal mix of mentor and exploitative businessman. God knows how Anderson managed it, but he made the usually wooden Reynolds into a fully-fledged three-dimensional figure, hiding rage and insecurity behind a mask of dim-witted charm.

The Oscar should have been his.