Am I the only person who thinks he's a lousy actor?

It's that ridiculous 'Method acting' style, that obvious desperation to come across as a 'serious actor' in everything he does. I tried to watch 'Sweet and Lowdown' but half of his performance seemed to consist of staring dreamily into space with a silly smirk on his face. "Sense memories"? Am I supposed to be telepathic? It's hard enough to have any empathy with a PICTURE of someone faking emotions, but it's impossible with Sean Penn. I once saw a movie where he played a gangster (don't remember the name). In one scene he was extorting money from a shopkeeper. In the face, the body language, the delivery of the shopkeeper you saw his anger and frustration peeking though his efforts to appear respectful and submissive. And you were there, in the gangster-ridden 30s or 40s or whenever, watching a hard-working small businessman forced to take food out of his children's mouths to support a vicious criminal who thinks he's too good to work. On the other side of the counter, Sean Penn is glaring, jaw clenched, veins popping out on his forehead. And you are there, at Actor's Studio or some such, watching an acting exercise. "Give me RAGE! You want to kill that meter maid who raced you to your car--USE IT!" I've never seen a Sean Penn film where I didn't wish someone else was playing his character.

But everybody is always gushing about what a 'ferociously talented' actor he is, perhaps because everybody else says it and they don't want to be different. It's the same herd mentality that had critics saying Marlon Brando was the world's greatest actor, even though it's impossible to imagine any sane person standing on a street tearing his t-shirt and screaming "Stella!" under any circumstances. (Not including annual 'Rip Your T-shirt and Scream Stella' competitions.) Any Method actor is mainly interested in showing you what a great actor he is, not disappearing into a role, so all you get is a mattered, artificial performance with nothing behind it. The rare exceptions (think Ernest Borgnine) can give moving performances, but the more catholic Method actors (think Pacino, DeNiro, Brando) can only give you polished artifice. What's moving about having gone to acting school? Sixty years after 'the Method' was new and hip and revolutionary, it's still a religion to some actors, and no one is more zealous than Sean Penn, proudly pushing Method to the point of madness.

On the other hand, after critics starting calling Marlon Brando 'the Greatest Actor in the World,' his career went into a slump. "If a star should doubt, it would immediately go out" and all that. Brando's performances became so tentative--but who could help being insecure when they have to worry about giving the World's Greatest Performance during every second of screen time? He kind of disappeared and became a kind of novelty act, a freak show attraction. Hmmmmm.

I just changed my mind. Let's all raise a cheer: "Sean Penn is the World's Greatest Actor!"