10 Famous Actors Who Only Ever Managed One Legitimately Great Performance

8) Hayden Christensen In Shattered Glass

Hayden Christensen was woefully miscast as a young Anakin Skywalker quite simply because the actor was incapable of being all the things the character was supposed to be: strong, conflicted, full of passion. Instead, Christensen was weak, emotionally inscrutable and wholly unenthusiastic. He was an uninteresting blank where young Skywalker was supposed to be a charismatic hothead.

Presumably writer-director Billy Ray took note of Christensen’s weaknesses when he was casting his biopic Shattered Glass, and saw an opportunity to turn a much-maligned actor’s failings into strengths.

As Stephen Glass, the journalist who fabricated his own most famous news stories, Christensen is truly pitiful, a detestable figure sympathetic only because of his inherent patheticness. It’s everything Anakin was, only this time, it’s intentional.

Christensen is at last a perfect fit: compelling even as he’s squirm-inducingly spiralling into a pit of lies of his making.