5 Great Performances By Infamously Bad Actors

3) Marlon Wayans In Requiem For A Dream

Both behind and in front of the camera, Marlon Wayans has developed a reputation as being a one-note performer; that note being a grating, high-pitched shriek. Marlon and his brother Shawn have had smatterings of screenwriting success – with the likes of Scary Movie having some very silly, humorous moments – but their filmography has largely consisted of puerile, sophomoric comedy that’s pitched at the lowest possible level.

Marlon Wayans’ comedies have a simple enough formula: Gross-out gags boorishly sandwiched together by incessant shrieking. His screams take on a whole new kind of meaning in Darren Aronofsky’s haunting portrait of addiction Requiem for a Dream however, where he plays an increasingly helpless heroin abuser named Tyrone.

Wayans is nothing short of superb in the role, managing to portray a perpetually high guy extremely convincingly – shifting over to desperation and naivety with admirable aplomb when the movie requires him to. He’s surprisingly restrained, too, playing it cool in the opening frames before his world comes tumbling down around him with every freshly pierced vein.

There’s something captivatingly tragic about Wayans here, but perhaps what’s more tragic is how the actor seems content to continue burying his best achievement by continuously piling cinematic slop like Little Man and A Haunted House on top of it.