5 Great Performances By Infamously Bad Actors

5) Andrew Dice Clay In Blue Jasmine

Some might argue that Andrew Dice Clay’s ugly, misogynistic stand-up routine barely deserves to have a place on a performance stage, never mind on the cinema screen. But alas, his comedy show made its way into film form in 1991 – a painful experience called Dice Rules that depicts a whooping Madison Square Garden lapping up Dice’s every mean word.

The inevitable critical backlash that arose as a result ultimately reduced Clay’s time on cinema screens to a mercifully small amount of low-budget pictures that almost nobody remembers, and there were a more than few eyebrows raised when his name emerged on the opening credits for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.

If there was anything more surprising than Clay being cast in a Woody Allen movie, it’s the fact that he’s actually pretty damn good in it, too. Dice plays Augie; a naive, working-class man who finds himself ruined after daring to invest in a business proposition that his wife’s sister (Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine) urges him to pursue.

Whilst the character of Augie is well-written by Allen, Dice still manages to supply the role with a surprising amount of range. The moment where he bumps into Jasmine on the streets of San Francisco and reveals how he is still hurting from years prior is an absolute gem. Like him or loathe him, Dice is superb in Blue Jasmine. It’s a performance so subtle and genuine that it threatens to his cast his throwaway roles in dismal comedies of the 90’s away forever, even if his nasty stand up routine does continue to leave a somewhat sour taste.