Fear not, Ewan - I ride to your rescue

The Forbes most overpaid actor list pegs Will Ferrell as number one this year. Well, no duh. But they single out Ewan McGregor as number 2. And that just seems kind of out of whack. And I’m not sure if it’s just that I like Ewan or not. The fact that he’s a nice looking fella who’s willing to get his kit off at the drop of a hat argues in his favor, as far as I’m concerned. But I think there are a few other elements that the Forbes assessment doesn’t take into account.

One is that there is a big difference between the best thing in a bad movie, and the worst thing in a bad movie. We all know that actors will sometimes work for the paycheck. You can take pride in your work. But you can’t eat pride. But once you’re in, you can do your damnedest to make sure that the time you’re on the screen doesn’t suck. Which McGregor frequently does. Where as Will Ferrell appears to be developing an aesthetic of suck. At one point I was thinking his overgrown manchild shtick was kind of interesting and wanted to see where he was taking it. But he’s not actually taking it anywhere. Character development done. I’d caution him that only the French think Jerry Lewis is a genius for doing the very same thing. It gets old.

The other thing that one can do with paychecks is finance your time spent doing no-to-low budget projects that do stretch your creative muscles. And Ewan McGregor has spent years floating back and forth between commercial and creative work. He’s among the actors who have been able to make the “one for me, one for the bank” career work. Will Ferrell on the other hand has really staid pretty exclusively in the commercial sector. Other than that Woody Allen movie and, if you’re really generous, Stranger than Fiction, it’s really been the crassest form of commercialism. Which is fine. Just try to be good at it. Have some pride, man. There can be a lot forgiven if you show that you’re willing to put yourself out there every once in a while.

And then there’s the intersection where these two concepts meet. Rarely is Ewan McGregor the top name in a big budget, paycheck movie. And when those flop, it’s not because he didn’t hold up his end of the workload. Where Will Ferrell has been the star of (and in some cases the creative force behind) several big budget turkeys. And when they go down it is pretty squarely in his dish. When it comes right down to it, Ferrell has become a big goldbrick. He’s the Barry Bonds of Hollywood.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, maybe there’s something that is missing in the analysis on the Forbes list. Sometimes a “by the numbers” look just doesn’t see the whole picture.