10 Famous Actors Who Only Ever Managed One Legitimately Great Performance

1) Jessica Alba In The Killer Inside Me

Fantastic Four; Into the Blue; The Love Guru. None of these are exactly films that ask Jessica Alba to show off her abilities as an actress. Even her better movies don’t require her to do much other than show up as eye candy, though – in Sin City and Stretch, Alba plays a stripper and a receptionist, respectively (hardly big character roles) – with the exception being Michael Winterbottom’s disturbing 50s noir, The Killer Inside Me.

It’s the one film in which Alba displays any depth. Playing a prostitute used as a pawn in the nefarious plan of Casey Affleck’s sociopathic cop, Alba is indelibly, traumatically human. In the film’s most notorious (and violent) scene in particular, Alba is haunting, a vulnerable girl betrayed and trapped by someone who – her eyes tell you – she clearly once loved and trusted.