By AMY DE KANTER

Some actors force you to ask ... is it really talent or is it the luck of the draw?
It’s been almost 20 years since Nicolas Cage starred in any movie worth watching.

I don't get it. Nicolas Cage was allowed to make yet another film. The Bangkok Dangerous poster was 90% Nick Cage trying to look tough, his name in big red letters above the title. He is the reason many people will flock to the cinema. But why?

Cage is a big name at the box office, but does he deserve to be? I surveyed friends, asking them if they knew how many films Cage has made over the years. The most popular answer was “almost 20” although none of them could name more than six.

The correct answer for how many films he’s made is nearly 60. “Almost 20” is the number of years since he’s made anything worth watching.

It gives me no pleasure to write this. I loved his films Moonstruck (though mostly due to Cher) and Raising Arizona (ditto for Holly Hunter), but those were mere drops in a big bucket of ... well, read my mind and fill in the blank.

I’m picking on Cage mainly because he’s recently had a movie out, but when you look at statistics, there are many popular actors who have made dozens of awful films but are stubbornly remembered for the one or two they got right.

Surely a good actor would only be considered so if at the very least 60% of his or her films were good and at least 90% of his or her performances were. Would we still be worshipping Tiger Woods if he only managed to hit the ball 5% of the time?
Remember the theory of the monkeys and the typewriters? It goes something like this: If you give one million monkeys typewriters and enough time, eventually they will come up with the entire work of William Shakespeare. By the same token, you would expect that anyone who made 60 films would have to make at least a few that did not totally bite. It’s the law of averages.

You tell me whether these people belong to the highest-paid star club:

Kevin Costner

Everyone, including myself, thought he was brilliant in Bull Durham and The Untouchables. He was good in Dances with Wolves and JFK. It is perhaps these are the memories that keep his fans loyal, despite decades in which most of his movies have done only moderately well at the box office and terribly in the eyes of the critics. The rumour that he is now considering doing Bull Durham 2 is the mark of desperation similar to that which put Indiana Jones’ whip back into Harrison Ford’s age-gnarled fingers.


Keanu Reeves

No one can say that Reeves is a great actor, but who was the genius who thought that Neo could do Shakespeare? His blank eyes and dreadful diction prevented Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 Much Ado About Nothing from being the most perfect film ever made. If I go see anything with Reeves in it, it is with a feeling of trepidation. If it’s terrible, I’m resigned. If it isn’t, I’m astonished. Reeves’ three diamonds in the swill: Speed, the first Matrix movie and Something’s Gotta Give.

Drew Barrymore

Okay, I didn’t totally hate her in Music and Lyrics, but besides that, the only performance she every gave that truly moved me was 26 years ago in ET. She was the least interesting of Charlie’s Angels and a really, really whiny princess in Ever After. And I’d be willing to bet no one can name half of the other 40+ movies she’s made.

Julia Roberts

Yes, another one with 50 movies on her résumé. She did a great job in Pretty Woman, gave an Oscar-worthy performance in Erin Brockovitch and held her own in Steele Magnolias as the least experienced, youngest actress. She swam strongly in My Best Friend’s Wedding, but not so in Notting Hill or Ocean’s Eleven where she was carried by Hugh Grant and the Ocean’s other 10, respectively. Her charm is her smile and attitude which effectively blind us to her mediocre acting. Movies memorable for being disappointments – Dying Young, Mary Riley and Sleeping with the Enemy, featuring a gloomy Roberts, who, deprived of her famous smile, had nothing to fall back on.

Halle Berry

No one else wants to say it, so I will. Halle Berry cannot act. She is beautiful, seems like a very nice human being, but she cannot act. She was a blemish in X-men and I don’t want to hear about her Academy Award ... that is the entire reason I stopped watching the Oscars after 2002. Everyone made such a big deal about her being the first African-American actress to with the award. I thought it a mockery to bestow this honour onto her, and not on Whoopi Goldberg for The Colour Purple or Angela Bassett in What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Halle Berry will soon be starring in yet another film. Studios continue to throw their doors open when they really should be posting armed guards at the entrance.

And so, the monkeys keep typing, hoping that maybe one day they’ll get lucky.