In no particular order:
Stupid amounts of plastic surgery -- and possibly steroids -- have taken Mr. Top from "Yeah, he's pretty ugly," to, "Are you positive that's not the clown from Stephen King's
IT?" I know it seems like Carrot Top isn't a natural inclusion on a list populated by hideous-but-talented stars, but what list of uglies would be complete without him? He's essentially famous for being bad, which is pretty noteworthy in and of itself. You know that rumor that if you get every question wrong on the SAT, you get a perfect score? That's a pretty good summary of Carrot Top's career.
Hey, did you know Gary Busey was nominated for an Oscar? Yeah man, pretty weird. It was for his role as Buddy Holly in the "Buddy Holly Story." That's a cool little factoid that won't at all affect your perception of Busey as a rabbit-toothed maniac who made you laugh in "Black Sheep" and made you shit your pants in "Under Siege". Everything about Gary Busey is intense; his acting, his facial expressions and, most importantly, his ugliness. Busey is what it'd look like if a zombie comedian killed Nick Nolte, ripped off his face, put it over his own, then put some huge dentures in and went on with his day like nothing happened. Gary, we love you... but you're so ugly that even this still photo of you on the page is scaring us.
I'm not saying that Clint Howard is not talented. What I am saying is that he looks like Ron Howard with radiation poisoning. Now, in spite of that, little Clint has one of the all-time great Hollywood names (Clint, of course) and is also a pretty enjoyable on-screen presence. It's fair to say that, obvious nepotism aside, he's not out of place acting-skills-wise among other tiny-role-having and grotesque-looking character actors. And maybe it's just a coincidence that Ron Howard's his brother. Maybe Ron Howard's actually holding him back, and if Clint didn't have that famous, incredibly successful director of a brother for an anchor, he'd be stealing parts from Will Smith. But maybe he'd be jarring relish in a plant in Pennsylvania. It's a coin flip, really.
Paul Giamatti has the face only a (dead) mother could love. He's an amazing actor and is Hollywood's go-to guy for their "every man" roles. Which is funny because he's far uglier than most people out there. This insanely talented, stupendously ugly actor has two looks--disgruntled beard guy (image) and shaved weasel (image). When done up in his disgruntled beard guy look, expect a quiet and bitter performance (his Oscar-nominated performance in "Sideways" comes to mind). When he's sporting the shaved weasel look, expect a, well, weaselly, highly frantic and comic performance (like his turns in "Storytelling," "Big Fat Liar" and the 10 hours plus chuckle fest that was "John Adams").
Either look is terrifying. Either way, the homely Mr. Giamatti is one of the greatest actors of our time.
First off, let's not split hairs: Richard Kiel is fucking awesome. Regardless of whether you know him best as The Guy with the Nail in His Head (Mr. Larson) in
Happy Gilmore, as Jaws, or as Club from
Pale Rider, Kiel is one of the most intimidating screen-presences in film history. Standing at seven feet, two inches tall, it's not hard to tell why, especially in a field as populated with midgets as acting is. In addition to that, though, he's got a face only a rusty shovel could love. And it looks like it has loved that shovel, violently and repeatedly. Please don't eat me, Mr. Kiel.
Mickey is one of the most interesting cases in Hollywood ugliness because he didn't start out that way. In the early 80s, Mr. Rourke, a former boxer, rose to fame with his deadly combination of rugged good looks and a quiet, stoic rage. Then, when his career began to hiccup a bit, he temporarily quit acting to... GET BEAT UP!
Sort of. You see, in 1991 Mickey decided to return to professional boxing. This time around, though, he was famous. Which made him a target for repeated abusive injuries. By the close of 1995, Mickey was so badly beaten down his face was nearly unrecognizable. But thanks to his brutal "make over," Mickey could move on from his roles as a pretty boy and take on some seriously bad-ass characters, like Marv from "Sin City." Expect more brutal, fugly bad-assery to come from this highly talented monstrosity.
If you want someone to play a hapless but lovable nerd, Qualls is your man. He was funny enough in
Road Trip to allow him the slack to seriously fuck up by making
Delta Farce with Larry the Fake Cable Guy Who Belittles Southerners by Misrepresenting Them But They Love Him So I Guess He's Not That Far Off Base, but one more misstep like that and we may have to jam his skinny ass in a copper pipe and roll him down a hill. He's just an extremely odd looking guy who seems to have found a niche for himself -- but army movies with fat douche-hoses is not it.
Gosssh! I'm fucking UGLY! You know you've been given too many recessive genes when the iconic, ugly character you played is actually kind of better looking than you are in real life. At least Napoleon Dynamite had a hook to his ugliness -- that whole late 80s clueless dweeb thing was working for him. So what's your excuse, Mr. Tom Petty after mouth cancer? And for those of you going "Aww, that's mean!" trust us, Heder doesn't mind. With the way his career is going, he's thankful for ANY mention he can get. And even though we sound kind of down on Heder and his career, we'll always be grateful for making us regular looking guys of medium intellect look good to chicks everywhere.
Abe Vigoda looks like Martin Scorcese with gigantism. He looks like Bela Lugosi if Bela Lugosi had a head shaped like a football. He looks like a bucket of rejected facial features. He's also a very funny guy with a great sense of humor about himself, to the extent that he still partakes in jokes about the premature reporting of his own death by People magazine in 1982. Also, to my knowledge, he is the only actor with the important distinction of having acted in both
The Godfather and in TV's
Barney Miller.
These two extremely talented actors have much in common: their acting styles, their careers and, most importantly, their brand of ugly. Both Buscemi and Turturro have faces that distinctly and rather horribly lack dignity. Steve's loss of dignity comes mostly from his Golem-like eyes and his oddball facial expressions. John's lack of dignity is born out of his dead gaze and off kilter mouth, which naturally tilts at an angle. Both extremely talented, super ugly actors have used their unsettling looks as muses for many of our finest directors, including Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee.
