Large Ham / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

"The goddamned pen is BLUE!"

Twenty four frames per second of overacting! See also the Actors for particularly repeat offenders.

Note: Merely quoting a line in ALL CAPS and/or in bold does not constitute proof of hamminess. Descriptions of the performance, character, and scene are, as are links to clips of the performance.

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Batman and The Dark Knight Saga

• Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face in Batman Forever. The other villain, the Riddler, is Jim Carrey, who has a whole folder here and illustrates this very page... amazingly, Jones manages to out-ham Jim Carrey; ponder that for a moment.
  • What's to ponder? TLJ can chew the scenery with the best of them. Even his performance in The Fugitive feels hammy even though he never raises his voice.
    • "This is my happy face."
    • "I. Don't. Bargain."
    • "Regular or Extra Crispy?"
    • "I DON'T CARE."
    • "What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble - Go get him."
• Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin. "Go! Kill the heroes!", "Everybody, chill!", etc.
  • Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, in a rare female example, is also a saving grace for the film.
  • John Glover's brief role as Dr. Woodrue as well, giving Dr. Forrester a run for hammiest Mad Scientist.
• Christian Bale as the caped crusader himself in The Dark Knight Trilogy. That voice must require some serious throat pastilles afterward, and notice how he can't keep it up when he seems out of breath? In all fairness, that infamous voice emerged in The Dark Knight, while not nearly as grating in Batman Begins. Apparently, that one had an okay balance. But still, to quote him in the second, "WHURRRR ARRRRRR THEYYYY?!"
  • The moment all ham broke loose in the third. All together now: "WHURRR ISH THE TRIGGURRR? WHURR ISH IT? YOU WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO AN ORDINARY SHITISHEN!!! WHURR ISH IT?"
  • And as himself. "DO YOU WANT ME TO TRASH YOUR LIGHTS? Seriously, you and me, we're done professionally."
• Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman (1989), though really, that's practically a prerequisite for playing the character. He likes Chewing the Scenery and gets several great lines... (one of them a Trope Namer: "Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?...?!")
• Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight is also sadistically wonderful, funny and terrifying at the same time. And hammy.
  • "What do you believe in, huh? WHADDA YOU BELIEVE IN!?" "I believe that whatever doesn't kill you...simply makes you stranger." It's not often the Straw Nihilist mangles an actual Nietzsche quote.
  • "LOOK AT ME!"
  • Ledger took it to such extremes, every line the Joker sounds as if he's chewing something. According to later interviews, this was said to be due to him actually chewing the prosthetic scars in his mouth. His Joker's iconic licking was him keeping the prosthetics moist and sticky.
• If you want to put it that way, anytime the Joker is played by anyone (see also the Comics, Live-Action TV, Video Games and Western Animation pages), the actor is going to find himself unleashing the Hog...
  • In the solo movie, Arthur Fleck is already pretty nuts, down to mental problems giving him an Annoying Laugh. And then when he becomes The Joker, Joaquin Phoenix takes no prisoners ("I'll tell you what you get! You get what you fuckin' deserve!"), even silently, such as him dancing hammily on the Bronx steps.
• Danny DeVito's Penguin. "I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING! I AM AN ANIMAL! COOOOOLD-BLOODED! CRANK THE A.C.!"
  • Hey, DeVito in almost anything as well. From Mars Attacks!: "ROOOOLEEEEEXXXXXX!"
  • "Shut up! I-- I can't THINK with all these SIRENS!!"
  • Get Shorty, where he was a ham playing a ham... playing a ham.
  • RUM HAAAAAAM!!! I'M SORRY, RUM HAM!
• From The Dark Knight Rises, we have Bane, who hams up every scene he's in with a voice that sounds like a crazed Sean Connery on steroids, while dominating every scene physically too. "I was created in the ham. Mollllllded by it. And by the time I saw unsubtle acting, it was nothing but BLINDING!"
• The Batman (2022) has another Riddler, which is a scarier incarnation but doesn't drop the ham - when Batman visits him at Arkham, at a certain point Edward breaks into song! There's also a scene revealing the Joker is on the cell next to him, with Barry Keoghan making justice to all the previous overacting, even before he starts laughing.

DC Extended Universe

• Michael Shannon's version of Zod can be quite hammy. While he's most restrained and cool, his Villainous Breakdown and Madness Mantra near the beginning of the movie is pretty delicious.
  Zod: ''Jor-El was right! You're a pack of fools, every last one of you! And you... you believe your son is safe... I will find him. I will reclaim what you have taken from us! I will find him. I will find him, Lara. (Beat) 'I WILL FIND HIM!'
• The follow-up to the new Zod was, appropriately, Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. And Jesse Eisenberg gives the expected ham, with talky dialogue spoken really fast, a perpetually manic mood ("Ow-wow! That is a good grip! You should not pick a fight with this person!") and a shoulder-length haircut that just fits the overacting.
  Luthor: Ding ding ding! Gotham roasts, extra crispy!
  • And when he's taunting Superman:
  Lex: Fight night! The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world. God versus man! Day versus night! SON OF KRYPTON...versus BAT OF GOTHAM!
• Ben Affleck, unlike Christian Bale, doesn't have to do a growling voice; his Batman has an electronic voice changer, which instantly makes his every word incredibly badass.
  Batman: Tell me, do you bleed? You will!
• Jared Leto's version of the Joker, as befits a sociopathic Monster Clown, is a thick, cackling slice of ham.
  The Joker: [to Monster T] Ohhh, that she issss. The fiiiiire in my loins, the itch in my crotch, the ONE, the ONLY, the INFAMOUS... HARRRRRRLEY QUINNNN!
• Along with the Joker, Suicide Squad (2016) has his soulmate Harley Quinn ("I'm known to be quite vexing. I'm just forewarning you.") and Boisterous Bruiser Captain Boomerang, who overacts even silently on his TV spot ("Oh yeah, you're the fire bloke, eh? [pulls out a lighter] Well, looky here. Ooh, it's fire! Whooooooo!").
• Aquaman already has a Boisterous Bruiser protagonist, but the two villains go step higher. King Orm (Patrick Wilson, who is clearly having a blast) gets carried away pretty often ("RIIIIIIIIIISE ATLANTIIIIIIIIIS!!!"), and once David Kane becomes the Black Manta, he says everything in a dramatic manner ("Perhaps THIS! WILL JOG YOUR MEMORY!!!").
• The title character of SHAZAM! (2019) is for all means a kid who becomes a superpowered adult, so he's a manic and show-offish Manchild. He easily outhams the villain Dr. Sivana, no matter if Mark Strong delivers basically all lines in an intense matter.
• Wonder Woman 1984 has Maxwell Lord, a smarmy snake oil salesman type played by Pedro Pascal channeling Nicolas Cage.
• The Suicide Squad brings the one and only John Cena as Peacemaker, who is having the time of his life as "douchey Captain America" and even got a whole show for him to unleash the hog in a weekly basis.
  • Even a woman assimilated by Starro in the climax has this trope.
  Starro: [through an assimilated woman] THIS! CITY!! IS!!! MIIIIIIINE!!!!!

Harry Potter

• Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, another character actually required by the story to be a Large Ham. His performance is summed up beautifully by Mike Nelson in the RiffTrax commentary as Kenneth first appears; "Yes, treat your family and friends to the flavor of traditional Northern Irish HAM."
• Rumor has it Branagh, Alan Rickman (Snape), and Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) had a friendly competition on the set to see who could ham it up the most. ... Ooooooh my.
• Strangely, Voldemort, particularly in Goblet of Fire. It's easy to see the fun Ralph Fiennes is having. Fiennes has said that he tried not to go over the top with Voldemort, but then he realized there's no other way to play him. For example, "DON'T YOU TURN YOUR BACK ON ME HARRY POTTER!!!! I WANT YOU TO LOOK AT ME WHEN I KILL YOU!!! I WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT LEAVE YOUR EYES!!!!" Or, what about the infamous, "CRRRRUUUCCCCCCCC-io!" Even after calming down in each following film, his infamous "NYEEEEAAAAHHH HEH HEH" from Deathly Hallows has become quite popular.
  • For context: This is the scene after Harry is apparently dead in Hagrid's arms. Voldemort and the Death Eaters take the body back to Hogwarts to gloat at the defenders. After announcing Harry's apparent demise, the Death Eaters burst into laughter, cuing one of the most awkward laughs from Voldemort one will hear. He even seems to dance in place for a second. Coupled with one of the weirdest hugs ever done a few minutes later.
  • AAAAAAAAVADA KEDAVRA!
    • So incredibly over-hammed it sounded more like "UUUUUUUhvudu Kuduvru!"
  • NYYEEAAAAH!
    • Incidentally, the hug scene was Fiennes' own idea.
  • He can ham it up with even just two words: "Nagini. Dinner."
• Imelda Staunton spits bacon and pork chops with every line. Even just Umbridge's cough is fraught with enough ham to fill a superbowl party sub sandwich.
  "As I've told you before, Mr. Potter, naughty children deserve to be punished."
  "FILTHY HALFBREED!"
  "I am Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic! WHERE ARE YOU TAKING MEEEEEE?!!"
• Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. He doesn't chew the scenery; he devours it whole, spits it out, and then devours it again. At least in Goblet of Fire.
  "SIIIIIIILEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNCEEEEEEE!"
  "DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE!" (Did joo putyer name in'a gobletaFIYA!)

  which is said while he has Harry by his shirt collar and pressed against a wall.

  • That bit was the result of ignorance of the source material, as Mr. Gambon hadn't read the book. Still pretty darn hammy, though.
  • At least he made up for it in subsequent films.
• Shirley Henderson as the hammiest Ghost in Hogwarts, Moaning Myrtle.
  Moaning Myrtle: I'm Moaning Myrtle! I wouldn't expect you to know me! Who would ever want to talk about ugly, miserable, moping, Moaning Myrtle? AHHHHHHHHHH!
  Hermione: She's a little sensitive.
• It's a small role, but Miriam Margolyes is nearly intolerable as Professor Sprout.
• Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody, between character voice, exaggerated motions, and mentoring role, fits the bill perfectly.
• He has only a small role in Goblet of Fire but David Tennant as Barty Crouch Jr fills every moment with ham, with wild eyes and that weird flicking tongue thing - sheer craziness.
• Gary Oldman's somewhat hamtastic turn as Sirius Black. "I would have DIED, Peter! I would have DIED rather than BETRAY MY FRIENDS!!!!!" He calmed down considerably in the fifth movie.
  • And occasionally, he goes beyond "somewhat" hamtastic: "I DID MY WAITING! TWELVE YEARS OF IT! IN AZKABAN!"
  • Hell, that scene even leads David Thewlis overacting along with Oldman at times.
  • Oh, and the scene where Lupin transforms into a werewolf, "You know the man you TRULY ARE, Remus!" and "THIS FLESH IS ONLY FLESH!"
• Professor Trelawney: "In THIS room, YOU shall discover if YOU possess THE SIGHT!" This is a central trait of her character. Naturally, as she's a faux psychic (most of the time, anyway).
• Both Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint get to be this during two particularly funny scenes of Half-Blood Prince — first when Ron accidentally drinks a love potion and then when Harry deliberately drinks a luck potion.
• Emma Watson's first scene as Hermione in Philosopher's Stone gets pretty hammy. In fact most of the scenes in the first movie for the kid actors are very overly done simply because of inexperience.
• Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter in Goblet of Fire. She has very few lines compared to the book but she makes every one memorable. Witness her interview with Harry in a broom closet.
• Helena Bon HAM Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. She made the character way more rabid and insane than described in the books. In her first scene in Order of the Phoenix, she's licking the dark mark on her arm. She takes it further with each subsequent film until in Deathly Hallows, each line she says is a thick slice of ham.
• Jessie Cave looked at the description of Lavender Brown as a ditzy Smitten Teenage Girl who is Sickeningly Sweethearts with Ron, and charged in full ham ahead. Witness the hospital scene.
• According to Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy) much of the overacting was revenge for having their subplots cut.
  • Speaking of Malfoys, Jason Isaacs was more than able to bring out the porks. "You cost me MY SERVANT!"
    • Perhaps he had listened to the audiobooks, where Stephen Fry practically howls that line: "YOU COST ME MY SERVANT... BOYEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Hunger Games

• Elizabeth Banks, under half a ton of makeup, as Effie Trinket.
  • She does it again, including the (prosthetic) makeup, in Power Rangers (2017), probably even worse given Banks is the villain, Rita Repulsa. While Banks doesn't go full screeching No Indoor Voice like the original Rita, she's extremely intense and exaggerated, going as far as eating a gold necklace!
• Stanley Tucci as Caesar, especially in Catching Fire.
• The Capitol itself is its own World of Ham.
• Then we have the Boisterous Bruiser Johanna Mason.

James Bond villains

• In Casino Royale (1954)^note The first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, released in 1954 as a television movie/episode of the anthology series Climax! Peter Lorre seems to be doing a Humphrey Bogart impression as Le Chiffre.
• "Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He's fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor... EXCEPT CRIME!!!" The Hammiest Ham that Ever Hammed.
  • "NO, Mister Bond, I expect you to DIE!"?
  • Better still - Gert Fröbe was a unilingual German speaker. He spoke all of his lines phonetically, and they were dubbed over afterwards.
  • One wonders at what the movie would've been like if Goldfinger had been played by BRIAN BLESSED, though that may have caused the universe to implode from the super-dense ham.
  • The laser wouldn't have been necessary, that's for sure. BRIAN BLESSED simply could've shouted until Sean Connery's face melted.
• Charles Gray as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever is a smarmy, snarky, campy ham par excellence.
  • Charles Gray, HE'S OKAY!
• While Yaphet Kotto played a relatively mellow Dr. Kananga in Live and Let Die, Kananga's alter ego, Mr. Big, is a pretty Big ham (hur hur hur), with lines like "DID YOU TOUCH HER??!!" belted with feeling.
  "Names is for tombstones, baby! You take this honky out and waste him!
• General Orlov from Octopussy. His Chewing the Scenery briefing scene near the beginning of the movie combines the speech patterns of William Shatner, the volume levels of BRIAN BLESSED, and a truly awful accent to form the essence of Ham. This was awesome.
  • "Yes, but tomorrow I shall be a Hero of the Soviet Union!"
• Max Zorin from A View to a Kill, played as a psychotic yuppie by Christopher Walken.
• Exception: Sean Bean played a low-key villain in GoldenEye.
  • Fortunately, the hamjitsu was conserved by the impressively loud Boris (played by the INVINCIBLE! Alan Cumming).
• Jonathan Pryce as Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies. Whatever scenery his mooks don't riddle with bullets or blast into a million pieces, he cheerfully chows down on like there's no... well, tomorrow. And the movie is, arguably, the better for it.
  I want full newspaper coverage. I want magazine stories, I want books, I want TV, I want radio, I want us on the air 24 hours a day! This is OUR MOMENT! And a billion people on this planet will watch it, hear it, and read about it from the Carver Media Group. (Beat) There's no news... like bad news.
• Gustav Graves from Die Another Day, grandiose in both his lines ("Japan is a bug waiting to be squashed, and the West will shake with fear!") and actions (parachuting in front of Buckingham Palace!).
• Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (2006), who was low-key most of the time, except when he corrects Bond's statement that he won't be safe if he tortures Bond to death.
  Le Chiffre: YOU! ARE SOOO WRONG!!! *point*
• Dominic Greene in Quantum of Solace is a restrained ham struggling to break free.
• Unlike the above two, Raoul Silva from Skyfall starts gobbling up scenery from the get-go. At times even bordering Camp Gay!

John Waters films

• Divine. One of the largest hams ever.
• You'd be hard pressed to count the people who aren't large hams in Pink Flamingos.
  • "RIVERS OF GORE! RIVERS OF GORE!"
  • "I guess there's just two kinds of people in this world: My kind of people, and ASSHOLES!"
  • "Someone has sent me a BOOOWELLL MOVEMENT!"
• Literally everyone in Desperate Living.

  Peggy: BRATS! BRATS! BRATS! How about my LIFE? Do you get enough allowance to pay for that?! I know you were trying to kill me! What's the matter with the courts? Do they allow this lawlessness and malicious destruction of property to run rampant? I HATE THE SUPREME COURT! Go home to your mother! Doesn't she ever watch you? Tell her this isn't some communist day-care center! Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother I HATE YOU!

• Tracey Ullman in A Dirty Shame.
• Serial Mom: Kathleen Turner hams it up big time, especially in her prank phone calls to Mink Stole. She concludes one such call with perhaps the best delivery of the word "motherfucker" ever.
• Cecil B. Demented:
  • I'M CECIL B DEMENTED AND I AM A FUCKING HAM!!!
  • Patch Adams doesn't DESERVE a Director's Cut! The original was LONG ENOUGH!!!
  • Oh, Santa, why has thou forsaken me, I cry, AND SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE ME!!!
  • Before I became a ham addict, I had so many problems. Now I just have one: HAM! It's given my life real focus!
  • You look so pale... * SMACK* Sorry, but Satan says you need more ham! (They really need to let her ham it up more often, cause she's just fucking exquisite in this.)
  • We're non-union! AND WE'RE TAKING OVER THIS MOVIE!!!
  • Cecil says I gotta give you a new look...
  • The concept was even lampshaded:
  Honey Whitlock: What do I get if I win? (referring to the Honey Whitlock costume contest)
  Ticket Seller: A big ham! What else?

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Just about every bad guy prior to Ant-Man indulges in Evil Is Hammy - Obadiah Stane, The Abomination (before transformation, not so much), Ivan Vanko, Justin Hammer, The Mandarin - both Trevor, who is a hammy actor playing the supposed terrorist, and Killian, who once he embraces the villainous part gets boisterous - Red Skull, Loki, Ultron... Malekith and Ronan are more subdued, but still say every line with intensity. For Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the best we've got is Arnim Zola as a Virtual Ghost, dropping Wham Lines in gleefully evil ways.
• Tony Stark is really full of himself, and always hogging for the spotlight ("I have successfully privatized world peace!"). Giving nicknames to everyone is a bonus.
• Asgard in Thor is a World of Ham. At one point, its ruler Odin (played by the one and only Anthony Hopkins) he tells his son Loki to shut up by growling at him.
  Loki: Father...
  Odin: HAEEERGH!

  This was actually ad-libbed. Hiddleston was genuinely scared of Hopkins at that moment.

  • Odin really loves to to shut Loki up. Here's an example from Thor: The Dark World:
  Loki: [referring to his desire to rule Earth] It is my birthright.
  Odin: YOUR BIRTHRIGH=T! WAS TO DIE!
  • Although Odin's son Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) gives Hopkins a run for his money, what with all the intense gazes and grandiloquent declarations.
  • Tom Hiddleston as Loki probably takes the prize pig in a family of hams, though, leaving most of the ham for when he strikes Earth in The Avengers. Seriously, the speech he gave to the crowd in Germany was spectacularly theatrical:
    Loki: Kneel before me. I said... KNEEL! Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.
    • Loki's need to make everything into a theatrical event about him is actually an explicit plot point.
  • Come Thor: Ragnarok and the family's completed by Hela, Odin's Card Carrying Villainess daughter. And it's not the first time Cate Blanchett goes over the top.
• Guardians of the Galaxy:
  • Benicio del Toro as The Collector. One-Scene Wonder in The Stinger for Thor: The Dark World, larger yet still hammy role in Guardians.
  • Rocket. Star-Lord also has his moments (a great case is when he meets Thor in Avengers: Infinity War and tries speaking in a lower register so as not to be upstaged), and Drax says almost everything in an overtly dramatic manner.
  • Thanos has good reason to be a little hammy, given his position. Even when he's giving an inconsequential lecture to Ronan, though, he still does it. "Your politics bore me." And once Thanos actually becomes the villain in Avengers: Infinity War, he might not be a fun villain like Loki and Ultron, but he's certainly as grandiose as possible.
• Ant-Man is only a regular Deadpan Snarker in his own film. Come Captain America: Civil War, and the fact he's surrounded by other heroes makes him want to behave as exaggerated as possible. Best example is when he becomes Giant Man.
• Black Panther has Erik Stevens/Killmonger, who is boastful, prone to giving speeches, and is always smiling evily.
• In Spider-Man: Far From Home, as soon as Quentin Beck gets what he wanted out of Spider-Man, he shouts a "Yes! Somebody get this stupid costume off me!" and ticks a lever going from the "serious hero" façade to the "cheerful and smug villain" he actually is, gloating and being theatrical whenever he can. Best case is the Berlin fight, where he continuously taunts Peter while surrounding him with exaggerated imagery.
• The Red Guardian, played by David Harbour in Black Widow, has a big personality. The Soviets’ one-time answer to Steve Rogers, he doesn’t even bother hiding how much fun he’s having as he gets back into the fight.
• Alfred Molina, reprising his role as Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home, once again delightfully chews the scenery throughout his screentime. He tones it down when finally freed from his tentacles' influence.
  • The film also brings back Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin. Though the hammy persona of the Goblin exudes more menace and malice than camp, and for a good reason, the gleefully evil energy is as present here as it was in the Raimi Trilogy.
• Thor: Love and Thunder has Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher, who after embracing darkness becomes fairly theatrical, best demonstrated by a menacing Faux Affably Evil tone. A great case is him suddenly appearing to the children he kidnapped and doing an exaggerated yet soft-spoken retelling of how his daughter died to frighten them. The brief appearance of Russell Crowe as a lispy Zeus is also dripping with ham.

Pirates of the Caribbean

• Captain Hector Barbossa. Even the character seems to be deliberately cultivating his exceptional, rum-laced ham, right down to the slightly unhinged Evil Laugh he repeatedly indulges in. And the bits where he goes "Aaar!"
  • His hamminess actually becomes an issue when trying to free Calypso. The requisite line is supposed to be whispered gently into her ear, but Barbosa hams it up so much the ritual fails.
  • Indeed, one of the best parts of the first movie is watching Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp try to out-ham one another.
  "No, what AAAAARRRE ya doin'?"
  • Also, this:
    Elizabeth: Captain Barbossa! We need you at the helm!
    Barbossa: ...Aye, that be true!
  • And then there's the scene where the Pearl is sailing around the maelstrom and Barbossa is at the helm, laughing his head off and generally having the time of his life.
  • What we see in the movie is the least hammy of Barbossa's stuff. The bloopers are even funnier, helped immensely by Rush staying in character for most of his flubs.
    "NAAAAAY, BELAAAY THAT!" (long Beat as he tries to remember his line) "... DO SOMETHIN' ELSE!"
• As mentioned above, Captain Jack Sparrow. It gets even worse when he is conversing with his hallucinations in the third movie (who are all played by Johnny Depp).
• Davy Jones, especially with that weird accent. DAMN YOU, TV TROPEEEEESSSS!
  • "HARRIDAN! YOU'LL SEE NO MERCY FROM ME!"
• In the second and third movies, Keira Knightley is clearly enjoying herself as Elizabeth ("I just wanted the pleasure of doing that myself!"). Her tantrum on the beach in Dead Man's Chest deserves special mention, where even her body language is just pure, unadulterated ham:
  "Oh, fine, let's just pull out our swords and start BANGING AWAY AT EACH OTHER! THAT'LL SOLVE EVERYTHING! I've had it! I'VE HAD IT WITH WOBBLY-LEGGED, RUM-SOAKED PIRATES!"
• And then Blackbeard shows up in the fourth installment. What fate befalls mutineers?
  "Mutineers HAAAAANG!"

Sin City

• Recognize my VOICE, Hartigan? Recognize my voice, you piece-of-shit cop? I look different, but I bet you can recognize my voice!
• This is a career-ending wound, WHORE!
• This is blood for blood and by the GALLON. These are the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days. They're BACK! There's no choice left. And I'm ready for war.
• Get that gun. Outta My Face. NOW!
  • (gets slapped)Pastaerd!!

Star Trek

• Naturally, if we're talking Star Trek, William Shatner is a given. Surprisingly averted, however, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where he gives a remarkably subdued performance, to the level of Dull Surprise in some scenes.
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan starts out with Shatner playing Kirk as rather melancholy, as the admiral is starting to feel his age. He goes on to prove he's still got plenty of ham to serve; you know the scene. Made brilliant when you realize a few scenes later that the ham was served in-character.
• Christopher Plummer as General Chang in Star Trek VI. His Crowning Moment of Ham-osity has to be the bit near the end where his ship is pummeling the crap out of Enterprise, and he's having a total blast, bellowing Shakespeare, while twirling around in his motorized Captain's chair. Hamtacular.
  "Cry '''HAVOC!!!''' And let slip the dogs of war!!"
  • The ham is noted in-universe by Dr. McCoy, who states "I'd pay real money if he'd shut up."
  • In Shatner's book Star Trek Movie Memories, a photo of him and Plummer laughing at a flub in the courtroom scene has a caption describing the two as "Hamosauruses".
• Ricardo Montalbán as KHAAAAAN!!! Interestingly enough, his first take on the character was even hammier, and the director asked him to dial it down to make the times he did rant and rave feel more powerful.
  "He tasks me! He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares maelstrom and 'round perdition's flame before I give him up!"
• Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Soren in Star Trek: Generations.
  They say Ham is the fire in which we burn.
• Behold! The quintessential HAM in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: John Schuck, playing the Klingon Hambassador. Remember this well — There will be no unchewed scenery, as long as Kirk lives!!
  Sarek: Do you deny these facts?
  John Schuck: We denyyyyyy nothing. We have the RIGHT to preSERVE our RACE!!
  • Shuck got in on TV Trek as well, playing the delightfully hamtastic Legate Parn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• An in-universe example from The Voyage Home: Scotty at the Plexicorp factory, who gets called on it by McCoy.
  Scotty: I find it hard to believe that I've travelled millions of miles—
  Bones: Thousands! Thousands!
  • As soon as they start the tour:
    Bones: Don't bury yourself in the part!
  • Not that DeForest Kelley doesn't overact - he's clearly enjoying being somewhat overblown during the hospital rescue scene.
• Klingon captains are never not hammy. Remember Commander Kruge?
  GET OUUUUT!! GET OUT OF THERE!!
  GLORIOUS, isn't it?!
  • Apparently, Christopher Lloyd was a barely containable ham in one scene. Kruge was supposed to call to be beamed up over his handheld communicator, but they could never get him to talk into the prop — he'd always spread his arms wide, throw his head back, and bellow "BEAM ME UP!" to the heavens. Epic ham.
• F. Murray AbraHAM as the face-stretching, scenery-chewing, Smug Snake Ru'afo in Star Trek: Insurrection.
  • He wasn't much less hammy as Salieri in Amadeus, which got him an Oscar. (It helps he had to endure Ham-to-Ham Combat against Tom Hulce's Mozart)
• Eric Bana: Shitty Hulk, but great Star Trek villain:
  IT HAPPENED! I SAW IT HAPPEN! DON'T TELL ME IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!
  FIRE EVERYTHIANNG!!!!
  SPAAAAWWWWK!!!
  • That first gets extra points because during one take Bana passed out after yelling it all.
  • And in the second one you can see him spit on the camera.
• Picard's rant in First Contact. Normally, Patrick Stewart keeps it mellow and classy, but when his crew suggests they run from the Borg, he has a Heroic BSoD complete with a couple of Big Nos and a thick side of ham. (Apparently he took a few lessons from Shatner in between takes of their previous movie.)
  Picard: The line must be drawn Heeyah! This far, no further. And IIIIIII... will make them pay, for what they've done!
• Star Trek Into Darkness gives us John Harrison / Khan, who just loves chewing the scenery while proving what a complete badass he is.
  "Your crew requires oxygen to survive; mine does not. I will target your life support systems [...] and after every single person aboard your ship suffocates, I will walk over your cold corpses to recover my people. Now, shall we begin?"
  • Or when he kills Admiral Marcus.
  "YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME SLEEP!"
  • Speaking of Admiral Marcus, he starts hamming it up during his Motive Rant. He also Milks The Giant Cow during this.
  Admiral Marcus: "War is coming! AND WHO'S GONNA LEAD US?! YOU?! If I'm not in charge, our entire way of life IS DECIMATED! So you want me off this ship, you better KILL ME!"
  • And given the character, he manages to get Spock to chew some scenery by inspiring him to do the "KHAAAAAAAN!" scream.
• The villain of Star Trek Beyond, Krall, is hardly hammy given the heavy make-up doesn't allow Idris Elba to do so. Though come the final quarter where Krall's mostly human again, and the angry dialogue just calls for overacting ("I fought for Humanity! Lost millions to the Xindi and Romulan wars. And for what? For the Federation? To sit me in a Captain's chair and break bread with the enemy!").

Star Wars

• Emperor Palpatine was like this in Return of the Jedi, but substantially more subdued in the first two prequels. Then he was in Revenge of the Sith, where any given line he says after the second act is pure, unadulterated ham. And he's still a fairly effective bad guy. One can assume he stopped caring about self-restraint once he conquered the entire galaxy.
  ONCE MORRRRE the Sith will RUUUUUULE the GALAXYYYYY... and... we shall have... peace.
  • Something...something...something...Dark Side.
  • The exact moment when Ian McDiarmid's ham switch was flipped to on in Revenge of the Sith? We all know which scene it was.
    "POWAHHHHHH! UNLIMITED POWAHHHHHHH!"
    • He did have flashes beforehand though: "Have... youuuuu... ever....... heaaaaaaaaard.... the traaaaaaaaaagedyyyyyyyyyyyy of... Daaaaaaaaarth Plagueisssssssssss.......... the Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiise?"
  • In Return of the Jedi, even when Palpatine isn't yelling about the dark side, he's still unbelievably hammy. "Now, young Skywalker........... you will die."
  • And, while shaking his head like a douchebag, "Oh, I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite op-er-a-tion-al, when your friends... arrive..."
    • Geez, he didn't have to be such a dick about it.
• Wass abot Jar Jar Binks! *shudder*
• Boss Nass. Voiced by BRIAN BLESSED.
  "YOUSA NO TINKEN YOUSA GREATER THAN THE GUNGANS? Meesa liiike dis. Maybe wesa... bein' friends!"
• Three words: Jabba The Hutt! "BO SHUDA!".
• Oh, my! The probability that C-3PO is not a fussy tin of camp ham is approximately three thousand, seven hundred twenty to one!!
  • Never Tell Me the Odds!!
• Darth Vader was quite hammy, not only during his Big "NO!" scene, but also in Episode IV as well. In Episodes V and VI, he was a bit more subdued and chilling. Bless you, Dave Prowse (who gestures plentifully) and James Earl Jones (who delivers his lines with intense passion).
  Darth Vader: Where are those transmissions you intercepted? WWWHHHHAAAT have you DONE with those PLANS????
  Darth Vader: Commander, TEAR THIS SHIP APART UNTIL YOU FIND THOSE PLANS! And BRING me the passengers, I WANT THEM ALIVE!
  Darth Vader: You are PART of the REBEL AllIANce and a traitor! TAKE HER AWAY!
  • Vader still had a few traces of ham left in his system, most notably in his We Can Rule Together speech to Luke in Empire:
    Darth Vader: Luuuuke, you do not yet realize your impPORtance. You have only begun to discover your POWAH. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our COMBINED STRENGTH, we can END this destrOOCTive conflict and bring ORDAH to the GALAXYYY.
    Luke: I'll NEVER join you!
    Darth Vader: IF YOU ONLY KNEW THE POWAH OF THE DAHK SIDE.
    • Vader's ham, particularly in A New Hope, may have been due to James Earl Jones dubbing over David Prowse's rather...unfortunate acting.
  • Hayden Christensen's turn as the younger Vader is better-known for another trope... Except for the times when Anakin has to express anger. YOUWILLNOTTAKEHERFROMME!
  • Heck, he even manages to get Ewan McGregor hamming it up alongside him in the duel on Mustafar.
  Anakin: From my point of view, THE JEDI ARE EVIL!
  Obi-Wan: WELL THEN YOU ARE LOST!
• General Grievous. What he lacks in evilness he makes up for with hamminess.
  Grievous: You FOOL! I have been trrrained in yourrr Jedi arrrts by Count... DOO-ku!
  • His hamminess probably comes from the fact that he's based a bit on Dracula.
• Count Dooku
  Count Dooku: You MUST JOIN ME, Obi-Wan, and together WE WILL DESTROY THE SITH!
• Watto. "YOU'LL-A FIND-AWHAT-A-YA NEED!"
• Pretty much the main reason Admiral Ackbar ever achieved Memetic Mutation. His infamous "It's a trap!" and "Our cruisers can't repel fire of that magnitude!" lines are loved solely because he's so dramatic about it.
• General Hux hams it up during his New Era Speech to the troops at Starkiller Base. Bonus points for unleashing fire and brimstone on the Hosnian System almost immediately afterward.
  Hux: Today is the end of the Republic. The end of a regime that acquiesces to disorder. At this very moment in a system far from here, the New Republic lies to the galaxy while secretly supporting the treachery of the loathsome Resistance! This fierce machine which you have built—upon which we stand—will bring an end to the Senate, to their cherished fleet. All remaining systems will bow to the First Order and will remember this as the last day of the Republic!
  • The First Order throughout the sequel trilogy so far is an empire of ham. Hux, Snoke, Kylo Ren, and Phasma all indulge in different flavors, from gleefully sinister to pulling bizarre facial expressions, to No Indoor Voice. This even extends down to nameless, low-ranking officers: "JUST LOOK, WE WON'T SURVIVE EVEN HUX IS GONE!!!"
• In Rogue One, stocking the galactic deli counters has fallen to the extremely capable Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera and Ben Mendelsohn as Director Krennic.

Superman

• Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor in Superman Returns.
  • "WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!"
  • "I would trade three THOUSAND coconuts, and every ounce of your blood, for a quart of GASOLINE!"
• Gene Hackman's Luthor (who inspired Spacey's) also serves, particularly in Superman II, even if the next example outhams him.
• Zod. One has to kneel before him in respect of his vast arsenal of over-the-top bluster, which he can back up on Earth with tremendous power only the Man of Steel can challenge. Whole websites have been devoted to the glorious OTTness of Terence Stamp's portrayal of Zod as a vain, short-tempered and sometimes rather bored aristocratic psycho. So indelible was Stamp's rendition (which bore little resemblance to the comic character on whom it was based) that most subsequent comic versions of Zod have been negatively received due to their lack of similarity to Stamp's characterization. Recently they just gave up and reintroduced the "real" Zod in the direct likeness of Stamp's persona.

Other Live-Action Films

• Andrew Divoff is deliriously over-the-top as the evil Djinn in Wishmaster.
  That which is eternal cannot die. But if it's any consolation sweet Alex, THAT HURT LIKE HELL!
• Into the Woods:
  • The Princes, especially during "Agony". They over-dramaticize their rather insignificant problems ("When the one thing you want/ is the only thing out of your reach!") and it is hilarious.
  • Meryl Streep as the Witch is clearly having a blast in the role.
  "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CARES!?! Cow's gone! Get it back!"
• TRON:
  • David Warner usually plays quiet, Affably Evil or Faux Affably Evil types. [Sark? Yeah, let's serve up some serious digital ham (or is that spam?)]. When you can make the future Captain Sheridan look restrained, that's a massive slice of pork. While brief, the whole final duel between Sark and Tron is a classic Hamto Ham Combat.
  • TRON: Legacy:
    • Not to be outdone, Jeff Bridges really cranks up the spam as Clu 2.0. In addition to his grand entrance to the lightcycle grid, Clu gives a BRIAN BLESSED-style New Era Speech to inform his army that he will make our world open and available to all of them. Yes! TO ALL OF THEM!!!!!
    • Michael Sheen's portrayal of Castor smells like Tim Curry caliber ham (with some David Bowie mixed in).
      Castor: Change the scheme! Alter the mood! Electrify the boys and girls, if you'd be so kind.
    • Clu's Middle-Management Mook Jarvis is quite a Large Ham himself, especially when he's tasked with announcing Clu's entrance into the lightcycle arena:
      Jarvis: Greetings, programs! Oh, what an occasion we have here before us. Because your rumors are true! We do indeed have in our midst... A USER! A user! So, what to do? What does this user deserve? Might I suggest, perhaps... the challenge of the grid?! (crowd cheers) And who best to battle this singular opponent? Perhaps one who has some experience in these matters... oh yes indeed, programs! Your liberator! Your luminary! Your leader and beacon! The one who vanquished the tyranny of the user those many cycles before! CLU!!!!
• The Twilight Saga:
  • Michael Sheen plays Volturi leader Aro, and his overacting makes for some of the best scenes. He is also, quite clearly, having an absolute blast.
  • Kristen Stewart's Bella in the Breaking Dawn Part 2 movie hams up a few of her lines, now that she's a vampire. "YOU NAMED MY DAUGHTER AFTER THE LOCH NESS MONSTER!?"
• Similarly, the entire cast of Brazil chewed scenery at some point or another.
• In Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk, Nick Nolte chews the set. Literally. After shouting a monologue at Eric Bana, he picks up a cable and bites it◊.
• Hannibal Lecter as played by Anthony Hopkins (Brian Cox, less so).
• Dracula, in many of his appearances - most of them aping the 1931 original Hampire, the man, the myth, Bela Lugosi.
  Dracula: I have charrrrtered a ship to take us to Eengland. Ve vill be leeeaving....tomorrow....eeeee-ven-inng.
  Dracula: Excellent, Mis-ter...Ren-field...
  Dracula: I neeever drink.......wine.
  Dracula: (swings a sword at Keanu) Eet iz no laughing ma-TTAH!
  • And taken to parodistic extremes by Richard Roxburgh's turn as the Count in Van Helsing.
    Dracula: Nooo!!! I HAVE NO HEART! I feeeel no pain! No love! No...sorrow...I...am...HOLLOW...and I vill liive....forever!
    • It's a bad sign when the Big Bad opens his mouth, and all you can think of is how many Linkin Park albums he owns.
    • Then there's Moulin Rouge!, where Roxburgh's villainous Duke is the largest ham in a movie stuffed with them (although Jim Broadbent gives him a fair run for the money - and the fact the two of them got to sing "Like A Virgin" together absolutely cements their oversized porcine status).
• Not so much in the original novel, but in just about every film adaption ever, Doctor Frankenstein devours scenery as if it were LIFE ITSELF.
• The most succulent ham of them all, Robert Newton in Treasure Island.
• Do not let the golden ham that is Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956) eclipse the cured Eastern ham that is Yul Brynner in that film.
  • "The city he built ... shall BEAR MY NAME. The woman he loves ... shall BEAR MY CHILD."
  • "Farewell! ... my ONE TIME brother."
  • "Does FEAR rule Egypt ... or do IIIIIIII?" * sweep your cape around*
    • Unfortunately, constant repetition and Memetic Mutation has also invested Brynner's postmortem exhortation for people not to smoke with a degree of ham.
  • Most everyone in The Ten Commandments hammed it up to some degree. Especially Anne Baxter with her "MO-ses!" Plus the dialogue was cheesy. So does that make this movie ham & cheese?
    • The Book of Psalms in The Bible does refer to Egypt as the Land of Ham.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • Peter Cullen returning as the voice of Optimus Prime. BEFORE TIME BEGAN, THERE WAS A LARGE HAM! Though the proper term for what Peter "Optimus" Cullen has isn't ham, it's gravitas. See the first episode of The Colbert Report for details on the subject. But David Letterman took all advantage from Cullen's/Optimus' hamminess in a Top Ten List.
  • If anything, Megatron is the ham here:
    I am... MEGATRON!!!
    JOIN them in EXTINCTION!
    You STILL fight for the WEAK! THAT is why YOU LOSE!
  • Jetfire in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, especially his line about his father (the first wheel, apparently) transforming into, "NOTHING! But he did so with honour! Dignity!" or his introduction: "Behold... the eternal glory of... Jetfire!
  • And for a non-Serkis Folk example, John Turturro, who already has his own section this page ("Ooh. Nokia's are real nasty. You've gotta respect the Japanese. They know the way of the samurai."^note  A character points out "Nokia's from Finland." and another reminds "Yes, but he's, you know, a little strange."), particularly in Revenge of the Fallen where he is free from The Men in Black constraints.
  • John Malkovich and Ken Jeong in the third movie as well.
  • In the fourth movie, Stanley Tucci. "How do you say "Get the fuck out of my way" in Chinese?"
  • In the fifth movie, Anthony Hopkins is having a grand old time. "Shut up. SHUT UP! Shut! Up!"
• Since Alan Rickman was mentioned in Harry Potter, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves has him going full-on Card-Carrying Villain as the Sheriff of Nottingham. When Rickman won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor, he used his acceptance speech to quip "This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety isn't everything".
• James Rethrick in Paycheck exclaims "Still think you can change your fate, Mike!? I AM A FUTURE MIKE!!".
• Those of us with young children can take some relief in the fact that Mandy Patinkin saw fit to have fun with his role as the villain in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.
  Who said that? Who dares challenge my evil ways?
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Willem Dafoe. The Green Goblin. "THINK ABOUT IT, HERO!" and "Sleeeeeep!" come to mind. The performance can charitably be described as "operatic".
    • "FINISH IT!"
    • "WE'LL MEET AGAIN, SPIDAH-MAAAAAAAAAAN!"
    • Willem Dafoe. Everything Else. "THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT!"
  • Doc Ock in the second film. "You have a train to catch." And when the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home confirmed a Role Reprise, his one line ("Hello, Peter!") is dripping with ham.
  • J. Jonah JamHAMeson, played with gusto by J. K. Simmons. I guess that batch of "Christmas meat" was ham...
  • And further proving villains are a fun role, Eddie Brock/Venom. "I like being bad. It makes me happy."
  • In fact, all of the villains except Sandman are this.
  • Bruce Campbell's cameo appearances.
• When the series was rebooted, they had an understated villain in The Lizard, a half-hammy antagonist in Electro (who is weird before acquiring powers, and talks deeply and dramatically afterwards, but hardly gets amusingly overacted)... and then in the final minutes of the last movie another Green Goblin keeps the ham intact even under a ton of make-up.
• Once Venom got a solo movie, Tom Hardy took the opportunity to go as unhinged as possible, whether with the deeply voiced Superpowered Evil Side ("Outstanding! Now, let's bite all their heads off and pile them up in the corner.") or just by doing grand physical actions as Eddie Brock. The sequel goes one step further, as not only the Odd Couple dynamic between both gets more screentime, but they are evenly matched by hammy villains Carnage (Woody Harrelson) and Shriek (Naomie Harris).
• Virtually anybody in Speed Racer, but in particular Pops ("Terrible what passes for a ninja these days"), Royalton ("Do you want to become a real race car driver?! Then SIGN that contract!"), and impressively, eight-year-old Spritle.
• What’s a "Large Ham" examples list without a mention of the galaxy of ham that is The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl? Nothing, that’s what.
  • Linus/Minus. "SEND HIM TO THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE AND HAVE HIM EXPELLED!!"
  • Mr. Electric. "YOU’RE IN MY CLASS!! NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!! I KNOW EVERYTHING!!! AND YOU... know nothing!! At the end of class, BOTH of you report to the principal’s office...WITH YOUR PARENTS!! (All while making spastic movements.)
  • Sharkboy, particularly when singing his (ahem) "lullaby" to Max, and even more so when he’s screaming like a heavy metal singer while fighting enemies.
• 300:
  • A new 300 is dawning. An age of HAM, and ALL THE WORLD WILL KNOW that SPARTAN KING LEONIDAS chewed EVERY LAST INCH OF SCENERY TO DEFEND IT!
  • Ephialtes and Xerxes were pretty hammy, too. (A particular scene of the latter's earned a "Ham alert! Ham alert" in 300's RiffTrax)
• Oliver Reed in Gladiator. I can't think of any ham-related puns based on his name.
  • YOU SOLD ME...QUEER GIRAFFES.
    • Speaking of Gladiator, Russell Crowe took the ham and cranked it to 11 as Sid 6.7 in Virtuosity.
  • Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus "AM I NOT MEEEEEEERRRRRCIFUUUUUUUUUUL?!"
• Both the villains of Space Mutiny. One of them is extremely easy to amuse ("Remember Carl's blond joke?") and seems to think that acting is entirely based on scrunching up your forehead ("Come on, skull, pop out of my skin!"). The other is unnaturally intense and always hisses.
  "I'm surrounded by INCOMPETENCE! I'm being undermined by my own disciples!"
• Jellon Lamb. Or perhaps, Jellon Ham.
  "He sitssss up there, in those melancholy hills. Some say he SLUMBERS DEEP, like the KRAKEN! The troopers will never catch him! So... I... wait, Mr. Murphy. I wait."
  • Or his even more delightful line, which is censored not because it's a spoiler, but because of how offensive it is,. "What is an Irishman... but a nigger turned inside out?"
• Faye Dunaway, burying herself in the character and a very Large Ham, as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. "NO. WIRE. HANGERS!!! EVER!!!!"
• Creeeeeeeeeedence Léonore Guilgud from Troll 2, incapable of not extending a word to epic proportions, and playing up the creepy witch Depraved Bisexual angle for everything it's worth. As Rifftrax so memorably put it: "This is community college draaaaaaaaama class!".
  • OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!"
• Dorothy Lamour commenting on making the Road to ... pictures with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope: "I felt like a wonderful sandwich, a slice of white bread between two slices of ham."
• Everybody with a name from Super Mario Bros. (1993) gets to ham it up now and again (Toad's guitar playing for one), but Dennis Hopper as King Koopa stands out above all the rest. "Bob-omb..."
  • Given that the two leads have said they only got through the film due to large amounts of alcohol, it stands to reason.
• Chris Farley in Tommy Boy. In anything. He hammed 'til the cows, er, pigs came home in every role. Especially in Beverly Hills Ninja. He acknowledged this fully, saying once in an interview that he played the same character in every movie, "just at different volumes."
• An exceptionally fabulous ham can be found in The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T, another Seuss story; Hans Conried plays the doctor with the relish of a thousand Burger Fools and the camp of a hundred Mardi Gras. The man made pointing downwards epic. And there's this line:
  Dr. Terwilliker: We shall play the most beautiful piece ever written. I wrote it.
  Dr. Terwilliker: I want him disintegrated. ATOM... by ATOM!!!!!"
• The Princess Bride is packed with so much ham, the Iocane Powder probably actually smelled like pork:
  • Hello! My Name Is Inigo Montoya! You Killed My Father! Prepare to Die!
  • LIAR! LIAR! LLIIAARR!
  • With Vizzini possibly being the champion:
    Inconceivable!
    THE CLIFFS, OF INSANITY!
    HAH! You've committed one of the two classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is NEVER GO AGAINST A SICILIAN, WHEN DEATH IS ON THE LINE! AHA AHAHAHAHAHA! [Falls dead...uphill.]
• To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar was the proverbial feast of a thousand hams. Every lead actor was salted, cured, and hickory-smoked. And it was delicious.
• Half the cast of Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, with special mention going to Elliot Gould as Reuben Tishkoff and Don Cheadle as Basher Tarr. A one-movie example is Al Pacino bringing the formula that won him an Oscar once to play the bad guy in Thirteen.
• Meet the Fockers has a tag team of Large Hams in the form of Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, both shamelessly mugging for the cameras and having a blast doing it. Amazingly, they manage to pull off the feat of being Large Kosher Hams.
• Apparently directorial advice to Forest Whitaker for playing Cpt. Jack Wander in Street Kings was something like "speak very VERY loudly half the time, act like you're hitting on Keanu Reeves for the other half" - with a wikked Baw-stahn accent all the while. Yum yum, good ham.
• Michael York as the Antichrist in The Omega Code 2: Megiddo probably tops every single example on this page, to the point that the movie should have been called The Omega Ham. His performance single-handedly elevates this movie to So Bad, It's Good status. See for yourself.
• Nathan Lane, in nearly everything, but especially The Birdcage. The whole movie was a hamming competition between Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. In The Birdcage, Williams and Lane were hamming it up so much they had to promise to do at least one "straight" (term used loosely) take for every scene.
• Austin Powers has quite a few including the main character and Dr. Evil (both played by Mike Myers). "OH BEHAVE!"
  • Fat Bastard and Goldmember (Myers again x2)!
    Fat Bastard: First things first! Where's yer shitter?! I got a CRAP on deck that could choke a donkey!!
    
    Goldmember: I love ''goooooooooooooooooollldddd!!!
• Everyone in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension was hamming it up so bad that toss in some cheese and a couple loaves of bread and you could feed Grovers Mills for a month. Just try to tell me that every single person in front of that camera wasn't having the time of their lives by trying to out-ham everyone else.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Lao Che and his cronies in Temple of Doom. "To the poison you just drank, Doctor Jones!" "Too much to drink, Doctor Jones?"
  • Cate Blanchett in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Complete with Ukrainian accent.
• Back into Blanchett, her performance as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings is subdued... except for this scene in The Fellowship of the Ring (warning: scary).
  Galadriel: In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Ham! Not dark but beautiful and hammy as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!
• And then there's Blanchett as the evil stepmother in the live-action version of Disney's Cinderella where she gleefully chews the scenery and spits it out in every scene she's in, completely stealing the movie (except for Helena Bonham Carter's One-Scene Wonder equally hammy performance as the Fairy Godmother) and creating the funniest Evil Laugh in recent film history.
• For one more female villain, Julianne Moore in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. It's a full-of-herself performance inspired by Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor (see the Superman folder), helped by the character being a Perpetual Smiler who always speaks in a peppy way.
• Highlander:
  • Sean Connery's mentor role — bonus marks for a velvet pimp outfit with peacock cloak — see here◊
  • The Kurgan (played by Clancy Brown) in the same movie sometimes becomes hammy as well (turning him even more creepy). According to Brown himself on his Reddit Q&A, he was getting paid next to nothing for the movie, so the director let him play the character any way he wanted so at least he'd have fun while on set.
• Sean Connery's performance as Sir August de Wynter in The Avengers. Includes his bombastic address to the Council of Ministers, his "Rain or shine, all is MINE!", and his over-the-top insults to Steed.
• John Travolta's backing of and appearance as the Villain Protagonist of Battlefield Earth would be damning enough, but his performance... wow.
  • "While you were still learning how to SPELL YOUR NAME!...I...was being trained...to conquer GALAXIES!"
  • "If you RATBRAINS knew AN-Y-THING about FIREARMS, you'd know you never store LOADED WEAPONS!"
    • The main hero of the film isn't much better. "A demon! A monster! A BEAST! RAAAAAAH!"
• "I aM TorGo. I tAke caRe oF tHe PlaCe wHilE thE MastEr iS aWay."
  • The actor was actually dubbed by someone else, as the camera they used couldn't record sound. Although, Torgo's constant mugging and twitching suggests that he was perfectly capable of hamming it up in mime. Even his walk is over the top.
  • "MANOS! As thou hast decreed, so have I done. The Hands of Fate have doomed this man! Thy... will...is...done."
• Michael C. Hall truly hams it up in Gamer. Just take a look at his dance number!!!
• Ann-Margret in Ken Russell's Tommy. Fine ham abounds. And your ham has to be pretty damned fine to stand out in that freakfest (see Tina Turner as the Acid Queen and Keith Moon as Uncle Ernie just for starters). She even got an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
  • Everybody in Tommy.
  • Ann-Margret is no stranger to ham. A decade before Tommy she stole the show as juvenile delinquent Jody in the silly potboiler Kitten With a Whip.
• Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent in Fright Night (1985) and its sequel Fright Night Part 2. Also Chris Sarandon's character Jerry Dandridge counts too. Oh yeah, and Evil Ed. "You're so cool Brewster!".
• Mystery Men has quite a few most notably Casanova Frankenstein and Tony P.
  Tony P: Disco is not dead! Disco is LIFE!
  Casanova Frankenstein: Yes, Tony! That is the passion I remember!
  • Both Tonies, actually: "Hey, shovel man! Dig this!"
• Margaret HAMilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
  "I'll get you my pretty! And your large ham too!"
  I'm me-eeelting, I'm me-eeelting!!! What a world, what a world, oh!
• Speaking of witches, The White Witch in The BBC adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In every damn scene.
  • "Then how DAAARE you come ALOOONE?!"
• John Candy sometimes played roles like this. In the 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors he had a cameo as an over-the-top radio DJ named Weird Wink Wilkinson. Weirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd stuff!
  • Steve Martin as Orin Scrivello D.D.S. from that same movie.
  • The late Levi Stubbs as the film's Man-Eating Plant, Audrey II, counts as well.
• Dan Aykroyd as JP Valkanheiser in Nothing but Trouble. Boola boola boola!.
  • Speaking of which, Grocer in Grosse Pointe Blank just oozes ham. And it is awesome.
• Half the cast members of Enchanted are practically required by the situation (cartoon fairy tale characters thrown into the real world) to do this. James Marsden and Susan Sarandon are especially generous with the ham.
• George Pickett is played this way in Gettysburg. In his first appearance, he comes riding into Longstreet's camp shouting "HELLO MY BOYS, VIRGINIA HAS ARRIVED!".
• In Gods and Generals, Jeff Daniels hams it up HUGE with his recitation of Marcus Lucanus's poem about Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Tops it off with "HAIL, CAESAR! WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE, SALUTE YOU!"
• The Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch's Dune (1984) is an enormous bucket of ham.
  • His nephews Rabban and Feyd are definitely on their way to full ham-hood, Piter de Vries even proves you can give sign language a pork content, and Gurney Halleck is hammy as ever.
  Gurney (Patrick Stewart) MOOD?! Mood is for cattle and loveplay!
  • Seems he and Freddie Jones had a scene-chewing competition going on.
  Thufir Hawat: (Wait, what?) THOSE SOUNDS ...(smack your lips, wiggle your jowls) COULD. BE. IM-IT-TAYT-TED.
  • Ian McNeice chews up immense amounts of scenery as the Baron in the Sci-Fi miniseries. Possibly lampshaded when Paul suggests renaming House Harkonnen to "House Hog". Though it's probably just the Atreides having a laugh at the Harkonnens' expense.
• Kyle Reese in every line of The Terminator.
• Michael Biehn plays the soft-spoken badass in Aliens, letting Bill Paxton take charge as the memorably large Ham of that movie ("Game over, man! GAME OVER!").
• Christian Bale as John Connor in Terminator Salvation.
• Listen to the announcer in any trailer for a science fiction film from the 1950s. Every single one of them tries to inform the audience, in the hammiest way possible, how terrifying, imaginative, fantastical, mind-revolutionizing, and amazing their film is. The trailer for Them! is especially notable for this.
• The Cat in the Hat:
  Mr. Humberfloob: Fired.
  Jim McFinnigan: I beg your pardon?
  Mr. Humberfloob: Fired.
  Jim McFinnigan: But I...
  Mr. Humberfloob: FIIIIIIRRRRRRREEEEEEDDDDDD-UH!
  • Soon after:
    Mr. Humberfloob: [speaking to Joan] If your house is as messy as last time, YOU'RE FIIIIIIRRRRRRREEEEEEDDDDDD-UH!
• Dolph Lundgren reeeally hammed it up as a villain in Universal Soldier (1992).
• Zero Mostel. Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Max Bialystock in The Producers. Abe in The Hot Rock. Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. John in Rhinocerous. He wasn't always a ham, but when he was, he was the biggest, best, hammiest ham ever.
  • He was also the voice of Kehaar, a Large Ham seagull.
  • The one human being who can out Ham The Muppets. Don't believe me?
    • In the second clip even his index finger overacts.
    • Subverted in The Front, in which he plays an actor who plays Large Ham, but is generally low key save one drunk scene. His suicide is quiet, dignified, and depressing.
• Guyana: Crime of the Century: Stuart Whitman absolutely chews up the entire republic of Guyana as Johnson, alternating between Cold Ham and Suddenly Shouting.
• Peter Lorre on some occasions.
  • "But it was the hand! I TELL YOU IT WAS THE HAND!"
• Peter Ustinov steals the spotlight in every movie he appears in. Special mention goes to his performance of Nero in Quo Vadis, where he makes being the emperor of Rome look so fun that it's impossible to hate him even as he makes living torches out of Christians. invoked
  • "Oh! Is this the untimely end of Nero?" Declare it in your most florid voice; it's fun!
  • KILL! KIIIILLLLLLLL THE NEWBORN!!
• A good chaser to Tim Curry's Pass the Ammo performance is the barely-released Marty Feldman comedy In God We Tru$t (1980), in which Andy Kaufman plays a corrupt Deep South televangelist with the wonderfully hammy name of Armageddon T. Thunderbird. Kaufman's performance lives up to the name's promise, with lots of Milking the Giant Cow and roof-raising shouting both on and off "stage", as it were, especially in the final ten minutes as his Evil Scheme unravels.
• Supporting performer Scott Paulin, in the beat-'em-up Knights. The leads are either capable only of Dull Surprise (Kathy Long), or clearly thinking mainly of their pay-cheques (Kris Kristofferson, Lance Henrikson); Paulin appears to have been the only one on the set who realized he was playing a vampire ninja cyborg named after an apostle and decided to just go with it! The resulting exuberant, gleeful bombast that embues 'Simon's' seven screen-minutes almost hauls the movie up into the 'cheesy-fun' bracket.
• Ciarán Hinds in the 1997 version of Jane Eyre.
  • Then what about his Caesar ? ''BE REASONABLE ! You're on every WALL with a KNIFE at my throat!''
• Mamma Mia! consists of Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, and Christine Baranski switching between hamming it up for all they're worth and giving a heartbreakingly genuine performance. Sometimes they do both at once.
  • Meryl Streep knows how to chew the scenery. Julie & Julia is one half hamming it up as Julia Child, and one-half shameless Food Porn.
  • Her performance as an evil witch in Into the Woods is a thing of beauty.
  WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CARES?!? Cow's gone!! Get it back!!
• Jon Voight as Paul Sarone in Anaconda. Whereas the other actors are clearly bored and just waiting for their paycheck, Voight plays the thick-accented criminal Sarone with so much overacting that a weird grandeur creeps into it. He's consequently the best thing in it.
• Christopher Walken playing an outsized version of himself in Balls of Fury.
• The best part of Steven Spielberg's Hook was undoubtedly Dustin Hoffman as the titular character.
  Oh, I hate being disappointed, Smee. And I hate living in this flawed body. And I hate living in Neverland. And I hate... I hate... I hate Peter Pan!
  Peter. I swear to you wherever you go, wherever you are, I vow there will always be daggers buried in notes signed James Hook. They will be flung into doors of your children's children's children, do you hear me?
  "I. HATE. PETER. PAAAAAAAAN!"
• Naomi Watts in the 2002 adaptation of The Ring. "What do you WANT from MEEE!?". Most infamously, in The Ring Two: "I'm NOT your FUCKing MOMMY!"
• Mel Brooks in anything. Particularly hammy as President Skroob in Spaceballs:
  "Why didn't anyone ever tell me my ass HAM was SO BIG!!"
  "This ship is too long! If I walk, da movie'll be over!!"
  • Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet.
    • Well, more like Small Ham, since he is 5'4''.
  • Not only as Skroob, but also as Yogurt. "Spaceballs da FLAMETHROWAH!"
  • Madeline Kahn in both Blazing Saddles ("Wilkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome. Come on in!") and Young Frankenstein ("Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found yooouuu!!").
  • In Blazing Saddles, Harvey Korman in his hilariously over the top performance of Hedy Lamarr (that's Hedley!), especially "Where's my froggie? WHERE'S MY FROGGIE?!"
    • "You will only be risking your lives, while I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor."
• Kurt Russell has such a habit of hamming it up that you could practically make a drinking game out of it. Probably the most jarring example would be the river shoot out in Tombstone, shouting a Big "NO!" as he unloads two barrels of buckshot into Curly Bill while making a face that could only be described as the face that a walrus makes when sucker-punched in the kidneys.
  • Everybody in Tombstone takes big pieces out of the scenery - Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo, Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp ...
• Daredevil was notable for one thing: the deliciously hammy performance of Colin Farrell as Bullseye. It was quite an appropriate way to play scenes in which he killed people with peanuts, pencils, paper clips, and playing cards.
  • Jennifer Garner as Elektra is no slouch in the ham department either.
  LIAR!
• Galaxy Quest Never give up! Never surrender!
  • As well as Star Trek, this movie is essentially a tribute to the glory of hammy actors. Which might possibly be one and the same thing given, you know, Star Trek...
    • William Shatner has no idea what you are talking about.
• Most of the cast of Rat Race, with special mentions to Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese.
• Michael Caine in The Swarm (1978) plays his Heroic Scientist character as condescending towards everyone and with a tendency to start shouting at the top of his lungs with almost no provocation.
  • And in The Muppet Christmas Carol: "UNEMPLOYED!!!"
• Komodo, the main villain in the otherwise forgettable Warriors of Virtue. While everyone else appeared to be playing their roles arrow-straight, the Big Bad goes so far over the top throughout the movie he could touch God.
• The Doctor/Cobra Commander from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra — and he spends most of the movie with a mask on, hamming it up with just his Darth Vader-like voice.
  • Destro, with that self-pleased smile and that over-the-top Scottish accent.
  • The Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe: Retaliation is also a deep-voiced unashamed ham.
• Clive Merrison's headmaster in The History Boys is definitely hamming it up.
  • Also, most of the boys get an element of this at least once in the show, especially when they're acting out scenes from classic films.
• Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? "But you are, Blanche! You are in that chair!"
  • Beyond the Forest.
  If I don't get out of here, I'll die! If I don't get out of here, I hope I die!
• Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate in The Great Race. His character is a parody of Mad Scientist villains, thus he overacts as much as it's possible.
  PUSH THE BUTTON, MAX!
  MAAAAAAAAAX!
• RoboCop. Peter Weller in the first two, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, and Miguel Ferrer (among others) in the first one, Tom Noonan (among others) in the second, Rip Torn (among others) in the third...
• Judge Dredd. Armand Assante as Rico and Sylvester Stallone as the title character ham it up both together and apart.
  • "I. AM. THE LAW!"
  • Certainly. But consider this: "LAAAWWWWW!!!"
  • That is just the tail end of a wonderful 9 second rapid ham-off between Sylvester Stallone and Armand Assante. "You betrayed the LAW!!" "LAAAAAAWW!!".
  • Rico also has a line where he asks "you want a new beginning?" forces a heavy bust off a table, and Motor Mouth shouts "IAMTHENEWBEGINNING!"
  • Both of them have flair for delivering sentences:
    Dredd: (To a ruffian) Code 457, resisting arrest, TWENTY YEARS!
    (later in the film)
    Rico: (To Dredd) To the charge of being human, when we could have been GODS! ... Guilty. The sentence is death!
• Gene Wilder as Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein.
  • And as Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, though he was far from alone in that movie.
    • "YOU LOSE! GOOD DAY, SIR!"
• For single film Ham content, it's very difficult to get past Gabriel Byrne as Uther and Nicol Williamson as Merlin in Excalibur. Williamson in particular makes a massive meal out of the scenery:
  Merlin: BeHOOOOOLLLLlllddd! The sword of POWahhhh! ExxxxCALibahhh!
  Merlin: CHHHAAAAaaaange! TRANS! FORM! NOWWW!
  Merlin: Oh, I have sleeept. For nine moOOns. What I did for eeeewe wasn't easy.
  Merlin: Do nothing. Sleep! Rest in the arms of the dragonnnn. DREEEEAAAAMMM.
  Merlin: A dream ham. To some. A NIGHTMARE!!! TO OTHERS!!!
  • Gabriel Byrne chews up a pig's worth of Ham even though he's only in the movie's first act:
    Uther: Merlin! I am the STRONGEST! I am the ONE!!
    Uther: They were hasty words Merlin! This is FLESH! and BLOOD! Ham and Cheese!
  • Patrick Stewart also hams it up as Arthur's father-in-law Leondegrance.
• Orson Welles. Don't you know who he is? HE'S CHARLES FOSTER KANE!
• Hank Azaria as evil pharaoh Kahmunrah in the Night at the Museum sequel.
• Richard Harris in many of his roles, perhaps most notably as English Bob in Unforgiven. He's also quite the ham in Orca, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway and many others.
• Richard Burton in the overwhelming majority of his roles, perhaps at his most over the top in The Longest Day, Cleopatra, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Bluebeard, The Taming of the Shrew and too many others to list.
• John Hurt as Old Man Peanut in Film/44InchChest.
• Raúl Juliá's performance as M. Bison in Street Fighter? OF COURSE!! GAAAAAAAAAME....OOOOOOOOOVERRRRRRRRRR!!!
  • "Something wrong, Colonel? You come here prepared to fight a MADMAN, and instead you found... A GOD?"
  • Raul Julia was also pretty hammy in The Addams Family movies. "MAAAAMUSSSSSHKAAAAA!" "CARA MIA!"
  • And in The Gumball Rally. "[shouting] Now you are marked... for life!"
• Both Doctor Logan: "I want you to sit there in the dark and think about what you've done. Think about it. Think." and Captain Rhodes: "I'M RUNNING THIS MONKEY FARM NOW, FRANKENSTEIN, AND I WANNA KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE DOING WITH MY TIME!!!" in Day of the Dead (1985).
• Ben Foster as the drifter in 30 Days of Night. And as Jake Mazursky in Alpha Dog: "No matter where you go, No matter what you do, I'm gonna hunt you down. I'm gonna hunt you down and then I'm gonna slit your throat and then I'm gonna cut you open and then I'M GONNA EAT YOUR MOTHER FUCKING HEART! YOU BETTER YOU PRAY, JOHNNY YOU BETTER FUCKING PRAY THAT THE COPS FIND YOU, BEFORE I DO! GET ON YOUR COCKSUCKING KNEES AND PRAY!"
• French actor Gérard Depardieu in about every single role he had.
• Pontius Pilate in the 2000 filmed version of Jesus Christ Superstar. Especially when he yells "HE'S HEROD'S CAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE!"
• Ed Harris resuscitating his dead wife in The Abyss "NOOOOOOOO!! She has a STRONG HEART, She wants to LIVE!!"
• Beware the wrath...of CROKER!!!
• Karl Malden hamming it up big time to fill the CINERAMA screen in How the West Was Won.
• Tod Slaughter, the screen's original Sweeney Todd. How he should love to polish you orff! Heheheh...HEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHHHHHHHHHHH!
• Half the cast of Troy are hamming it up but Brian Cox easily bests them all as a bloodthirsty, utterly batshit insane Agamemnon.
  • Brad Pitt as Achilles isn't a slouch either: "Immortality? Take it! IT'S YOURS!"
• David Hurst wildly overacts as the headwaiter in Hello, Dolly!.
• Tom Cruise in Minority Report: "Don't you EVER SAY HIS NAME!"
  • Him in Tropic Thunder.
  "Okay, Flaming Dragon. Fuckface. First, take a big step back, and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!!!"
• Bernard Hill as Theoden in The Lord of the Rings. He even says ham.
• Victor McLaglen in most of his appearances for John Ford.
• Kathy Bates as The Waterboy's overbearing mother: "FOOSBALL?!"
  • Her Oscar-winning performance as Annie Wilkes from Misery.
  "I DON’T WANT HER SPIRIT!!! I WANT HER!!! AND YOU MURDERED HER!!!"
  "YOU MURDERED MY MISERYYYYYY!!!"
  "HE DIDN’T GET OUT OF THE COCK-A-DOODY CAR!!!"
  "I’LL GET YOUR STUPID PAPER, BUT YOU’D JUST BETTER START SHOWING ME SOME APPRECIATION AROUND HERE, MISTER MAN!!"
• Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds: "We're gonna be doin' ONE THANG and ONE THANG ONLY: Killing Natzies."
  • Alternatively, Christoph Waltz eats up every scene he's in, even when he's being entirely calm.
  Oooh! That's a bingo! Is that how you say it?
  • Even Mélanie Laurent goes ham on a few scenes both in her native French and in English, particularly her Evil Laugh to all the Nazis in the cinema that she is burning down around them.
  • Brad Pitt as an Unintelligible Pikey in Snatch., where it's easy to see how much he's enjoying it.
• Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) has Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter (or as put by the Nostalgia Critic, Helena "BonHamming It Up" Carter) as the Red Queen. In the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, there's also Sacha Baron Cohen as Time.
  • Most of Depp's career post-Pirates of the Caribbean, be it with Tim Burton - Willy Wonka, Sweeney Todd, Barnabas Collins - or without (Rango).
• Bill Nighy, people. Especially when he's Viktor in the Underworld films and Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean films. And as Rattlesnake Jake in Rango.
• He's a villainous sorcerer who got no less than three songs, one of which was a Villain Love Song. He had an Unlimited Wardrobe replete with swirling capes and infamous tights. On top of that, he was frightening, he reordered time, he turned the world upside down, and he did it all for you! Jareth (David Bowie) is exhausted from living up to your expectations of hamminess. Isn't that generous?
• Spawn has John Leguizamo as the Clown, better known as...
  "I'm not the Vindicator or the Victimizer or the Vaporizer or the Vibrator! I'm... The Violator!"
• Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, especially in her Mama Bear moments. Surprisingly enough, she won an Oscar for it.
• Ralph Fiennes as Hades in the remake of Clash of the Titans. Apparently he watched Battlefield Earth a lot while preparing for the role.
  • Liam Neeson sometimes dives into it as well. "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"
• Paul McGann's cameo in The Three Musketeers (1993) is brief, but more than makes up for it in hamminess ( "D'ARTAGNAAAAN" )
• Paul Giamatti chews up a whole castle, and chews off a few hands, in Ironclad.
• Jay Robinson:
  KNEEL! KNEEL TO YOUR GOD!
• The Court Jester. Half the budget was apparently spent repairing the scenery Danny Kaye ate. Get it?
  • Got it.
    • Good.
• The Duke of Buckingham in Paul W.S. Anderson's re-imagining of The Three Musketeers (2011) is a scenery-chewing, tantrum-chucking hunk of smoke-cured goodness. And he's played by Orlando Bloom, believe it or not. And it's glorious.
• It's not all that often you see Tim Roth embracing the ham. Fortunately, he does so to great effect in Hoodlum.
  • Planet Of The Apes, where the hammy performance transcends the heavy make-up (and makes General Thade even more chilling).
• Jared Leto along with a head of cornrows in Panic Room.
• Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger is practically ham personified...especially in Freddy vs. Jason
  "OH THAT'S RIGHT! They all forgot! That's why I needed Jason to kill for me to get them to remember! But now, he JUST WON'T STOP! That. Hockey. Punk!"
• Maximilian Schell as the Mad Scientist in The Black Hole.
• Juliette Lewis really goes for it as Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers.
  "Are yew flirtin' with me?"
  "How sexy hammy am I now, you fuck?!?"
• Watching Bruce Payne, it is difficult to tell if he takes his roles too seriously or doesn't take them seriously enough but it amounts to the same. Just watch how he says the phrase "headless chickens" in Highlander: Endgame.
• Paul Freeman had a great time as Ivan Ooze in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. He played big and broad and improvised a lament on missing The Brady Bunch Reunion during Ooze's thousands of years locked away.
  • "Ladies and gentlemen! The Ooze is BACK!"
• Steven Seagal is a crowning example of Dull Surprise, even though sometimes he speaks very passionately ("I'll take you to the bank, senator Trent,*dramatic pause*, the blood bank!"). His lack of expression is usually countered by hammy villains (who probably knew what film they were dealing with): in Under Siege, Gary Busey (who even dresses in drag at a certain point!) and Tommy Lee Jones; in On Deadly Ground, John C. McGinley (who F-yous an old guy several times before killing him) and Michael Caine:
  "FUCK, THOSE ANIMALS STINK!"
  "Then we should COUNT on that, Mr. McGruder! Forrest Taft is the patron saint of the impossible. And if you had only done your job like you're supposed to, it wouldn't have COME TO THIS!"
  "You're a bunch of GUTLESS PRICKS! ALL OF YOU!"
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. SO MUCH.
  Wallace Wells: "FFFIIIIIIIIGGGHHHTTT!!!!!"
  Lucas Lee: "Now you listen close, and you listen hard, bucko. The next click you hear is me hanging up. The one after that... IS ME PULLING THE TRIGGER!!"
  Roxy Richter: "Give it a rest, Ramona! This is a LEAGUE game... meaning your precious Scott must DEFEAT ME WITH HIS OWN FISTS!!!"
  MISSSTER PILGRIM! It is I, Matthew Patel! Consider our fight... BEGUN!
  Todd Ingram: "Because you'll be pulverized in two seconds, and the cleaning lady? She cleans up... dust. SHE DUSTS."
  Gideon Graves: "You made me swallow my gum... it's gonna be in my digestive tract for SEVEN YEARS!!!"
• Joe Clark as portrayed by Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me.
  • Morgan Freeman as a pimp named Fast Black in Street Smart, not only is it against type casting even for its time, Freeman gives a pretty frightening over the top performance. The most frightening is the bathroom beatdown on Christopher Reeve, that probably made him piss his pants.
• Edward James Olmos as Selena's father in Selena, don't start him on how Hispanic-Americans get treated he won't stop. And also there's the scene where Selena starts dancing in a skimpy clothing and Olmos' character nearly has a meltdown, and yelling "YOU'RE FIRED" at Selena's boyfriend/band member either when he trashes a hotel room or he makes it clear he has a thing for his daughter. There are times where he's calm and subtle and there's other scenes where Olmos completely loses it and goes completely over the top. Though Stand and Deliver was pretty hammy in the performance department too, but a little more subtle than Selena.
• Joe Spinell in Maniac! (1980) and to a greater degree The Last Horror Film complete with whining, crying and general disturbing behavior which is natural considering one was a serial killer and another was a crazed stalker fan.
• Most of the characters, even the atmosphere in John Woo's HK movies (Sometimes in his American movies but to a lesser extent), to a glorious level. Chow Yun-fat is the winner of hamminess in Woo's movies though, with the most hammy being the rice scene in A Better Tomorrow II where Fat nearly force feeds an American Gangster rice at gun point. Hard Boiled is built of ham, which just makes it more awesome. The villains in nearly all of Woo's films, even his American films with the exception of Windtalkers, are great giant hams (best example being Face/Off where Nicolas Cage becomes John Travolta and vice versa, and the results are copious amounts of Ham-to-Ham Combat).
• THAT WAS AN ORDER! STEINER'S ATTACK WAS AN ORDER! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, TO DISOBEY AN ORDER THAT I GIVE! THE GENERALS HAVE BEEN LYING TO ME, EVERYONE HAS BEEN LYING TO ME, EVEN THE SS!
  • In fairness, this is a pretty accurate portrayal. Hitler is among the real life hams, after all.
• Brian Thompson in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation:
  The merger has begun! Earth is under attack! And IT! IS! GLORIOUS!
• Piper Laurie as Margaret White, the fanatically religious mother of the title character, in Carrie (1976). Her performance was so over-the-top that she thought that the film was meant to be a comedy... before she saw the finished product. She wound up getting an Oscar nomination for it.
• Proving again that no one can ham it up like an Academy Award-winner, the normally restrained Charlize Theron really goes for it as the evil Queen Ravenna in Snow White & the Huntsman - watching her guzzle all the scenery in sight is by far the most entertaining thing about the movie. She even goes into orbit when she isn't turning the volume up:
  Ravenna: Come. And avenge. Your father.
  • The Huntsman: Winter's War shows it runs in the family, as Emily Blunt's Freya is an ice queen who's mostly restrained until Ravenna shows up and forces her to overact accordingly.
• Melissa Leo in The Fighter, whose scenes feel like that they are in a different film (compared to the restrained acting of Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams and the hyperactive method acting of Christian Bale). Along with Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (playing an over-the-top version of a rich Southerner), it proves that hamminess is exactly what the Academy wants (both performances won Oscars).
• Jeff Bridges as U.S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn in True Grit. Somehow manages to out-ham the John Wayne portrayal from the original 1969 version.
  • He does another hammy cowboy in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, who shows he won't leave scenery intact right in his first line:
  Name is Champagne, but you can call me Champ.
  • As mentioned in the Marvel folder, Obadiah Stane from Iron Man.
  TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
• The Drake crime family in Hobo with a Shotgun - the main villain even dances a jig half the time he's on screen as he boasts about being an evil bastard.
• Stephen Lang's breakout role in Avatar, playing a Colonel Badass which seemed perfectly fit for R. Lee Ermey, and as another villain in Conan the Barbarian (2011).
• Tchéky Karyo as the villain in both Bad Boys (1995) (Fouchet) and Kiss of the Dragon (inspector Richard), not to mention Dobermann. Kiss of the Dragon in particular has Karyo in a role that consists of yelling and screaming and then trying to act somewhat calm and then yelling some more.
• Yello Dyno of Tricky People: "NOT THE OLD 'I GOT SOME PUPPIES IN MY CAR' ROUTIIINE!!"
• Johnny from The Room is one of the more bizarre examples of the trope, due to his strange accent and bored tone of voice whenever he's trying to emote.
• Dieter Laser, the villain in the first Human Centipede film, is quite proud of himself for the surgical monstrosity he has created, and isn't afraid to show it. He even pulls a mirror off the wall and kisses his own reflection as he sheds tears of joy.
  "I DID IIIIT! AAHH HAH HAH HAH!"
• Harrison Ford playing Dodgers manager Branch Rickey in 42. This is apparently Truth in Television, as baseball historians said the real Rickey was even more hammy than Ford's portrayal.
• The 2013 CBC movie Jack, about Canadian politician Jack Layton, portrays him as a bit hammy. It's also discussed within the movie; Olivia mentions that Jack Layton is a ham. Truth in Television, since in real life his time as NDP leader was marked by a relatively hammier debating style than that associated with the leaders of the more mainstream political parties.
• Clarence Williams III as Mr. Simms in Tales from the Hood. Especially in the final scene when he makes his dramatic revelation to his three visitors.
• In Help! John Lennon is the hammiest of The Beatles, but the villains take the cake (Leo McKern as a Thuggee priest, Victor Spinetti's Mad Scientist...).
• In Cats & Dogs, we have the Big Bad feline, Mr. Tinkles.
  Mr. Tinkles: At what point did you forget that WE'RE TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD?!?
  • And in the sequel, we have another evil feline, Kitty Galore.
• Elysium: Delacourt is hammy enough, though she has absolutely nothing on Sharlto Copley's batshit insanity as Kruger. Another example is Spider, who spends most of the movie biting off pieces of scenery with some... interesting gestures.
• Colm Feore (The Lord Marshal), Karl Urban (Vaako), and Thandie Newton (Dame Vaako) in The Chronicles of Riddick.
• In the tradition of its source material, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has several grade-A hams. Hiroki Narimiya as Phoenix Wright and Akiyoshi Nakao as Larry Butz are just two of the louder portrayals in the movie. Even the 'hair'' in this movie overacts.
• Lee Pace camps it up as the Elf-King Tharanduil in The Hobbit to levels of utter hammy fabulousness unheard of by lesser mortals.
• Several actors in the adaptation of Cloud Atlas get to have a lot of fun.
  • Tom Hanks really gets to let loose in several of his roles, especially with Dr. Henry Goose and Dermont.
  • Jim Broadbent as Timothy Cavendish is very fun to watch and his narration is the most playful than any of the other ones.
  • Most of Hugo Weaving's performances are pretty restrained, but he completely gobbles the scenery as Old Georgie.
• In the horror anthology film Body Bags, John Carpenter as the Coroner is chewing the scenery during his segments with a very goofy character who constantly makes death-related puns and treats the corpses he gets in as if they were living people.
• Eccentric Swedish actor Ernst-Hugo Järegård became a cult actor for turning any role of his into a devoted combination of a really Large Ham and an extra deadpan Snark Knight. His enormous charisma was a problem for directors and Lars von Trier remarked that during the filming of Europa, Järegård craved for attention even when he was supposed to be in the background and had to be appeased with cigars. Then Von Trier had him gårdas Dr. Stig Helmer in the cult show Riget, who is an arrogant Swedish neurosurgeon given to ranting about Danes from the hospital's rooftop, punctuated by a Skyward Scream of his catchphrase, "DANSKJÄVLAR!!!" (Danish Fuckers!) He similarly puts his hamminess to good use as the narrator for the Swedish H. P. Lovecraft audio books.
• Xur in The Last Starfighter, as portrayed by Norman Snow:
  "My dear Ko-Dan friends! Lest we forget, it was your OWN EMPEROR who charged me with command of this armada....For only I hold the secret to the Frontier....Just as only I know the location of the Starfighter base....And therefore, ONLY I WILL GIVE THE ORDAH TO FIYAH!!"
• Stephen Mendel as General Dark Onward, the resident ham in the Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (which is a borderline World of Ham to begin with), shouts a lot at his subordinates, and, at one point, right at the camera. For this reason, it's no big surprise that he takes a liking to the Nerd's web show.
  "What the hell are all these FUCKING BOXES doing here?!"
• Hugh Jackman talking about his role in Pan: "Joe [Wright] was saying, 'I want to employ your theatrical side,'" Jackman explains. "I said: 'You mean the big, hammy side?' He said: 'I wouldn't put it that way, but yeah.'"
• X-Men: Apocalypse:
  • Erik Lehnsherr cries out at the top of his lungs, "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT FROM ME?! IS THIS WHAT I AM?!" Clearly Michael Fassbender was trying to get to Ian McKellen's Magneto, highlighted in the actor's folder here.
  • En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse is a goldmine of these, to the point where it almost seems like he has been ripped straight out of the '90s cartoon. Bryan Singer directed Oscar Isaac's performance by requesting "quarter Skeletor," "half Skeletor" or "full Skeletor." The quotes below are clearly on the last category.
    "EVERYTHING THEY'VE BUILT WILL FALL! AND FROM THE ASHES OF THEIR WORLD, WE'LL BUILD A BETTER ONE!"
    "No more stones. No more spears. No more slings. No more swords! NO MORE WEAPONS! NO MORE SYSTEMS! NO MORE... No more superpowers."
    "YOU CAN FIRE YOUR ARROWS FROM THE TOWER OF BABEL, BUT YOU CAN NEVER STRIKE GOD!"
    "Charles, I know you can hear me. We're still connected. CHARLES! SHOW YOURSELF! CHAAAAAARLES! SHOW YOURSELF!"
    "CHARLES!!! COME, RESCUE YOUR WEAKLINGS! GIVE YOUR LIFE FOR THEIRS! CHARLES, WILL YOU DO NOTHING?!"
  • It's Played for Laughs with Quicksilver, who is exasperated from being interrogated by Stryker on a subject he knows absolutely nothing about: "WE DON'T KNOW, BRO!!"
  • Professor Xavier hollers in the astral plane, "UNLEASH YOUR POWER! LET GO, JEAN!! JEAN, LET GO!!!"
• Ryan Reynolds already showed he had the ham to play Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So, come the Deadpool (2016) solo movie, the character is as unhinged as in the comic, hammy even with his face masked.
  Deadpool: OH! Ohohoho...CANADA! (wiggles his wrist around, which is now limp) That's not good. Cock-shot! (CLANG!!!) OW! (his other hand is now broken at the wrist) Oh, your poor wife! (flopping his broken arms) All the dinosaurs feared the T. rex!
• Joe Pesci is hardly subtle in any role, especially given his Typecasting as either "Hair-Trigger Temper" (Raging Bull, GoodFellas) or "Smug Snake-wannabe" (the Lethal Weapon sequels). Home Alone not only enables Pesci to chew lots of scenery by playing a villain, but puts him alongside the equally hammy Daniel Stern ("HARRY! I'VE REACHED THE TOP!!").
• Ghostbusters (2016) had Kate McKinnon as Jillian Holtzmann, a Mad Scientist who never keeps still. From her introduction saying "Come here often?", to a dance sequence, she's enjoying the whole ordeal profusely.McKinnon is having so much fun in the role the Blu-Ray has almost 10 minutes of her improvising, appropriately named "Holtzmann Gone Wild".
• Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross is a One-Scene Wonder, delivering a seven-minute monologue that remains one of the most memorable in cinema. Almost every line is quotable, including such lines as "Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only," "FUCK YOU! That's my name," and "As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone want to see Second Prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired." The scene, which doesn't exist in David Mamet's Pulitzer-winning play, serves to underline the intense pressure the four salesmen are under. Rarely has scenery been chewed harder.
• Veteran character actor Timothy Carey was skilled at this, which came in handy since he tended to get cast as unhinged oddballs. But his film The World's Greatest Sinner, is 77 minutes of Carey delivering up plate after plate of Ham. He plays an insurance agent-turned-rockabilly singer/cult leader/politician, who eventually starts believing that he's God.
• In Rampage, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a smug man in black with a cowboy drawl, who basically takes Negan up to eleven, hamming up every single time he appears on-screen.
  When science shits the bed, I'm the one who comes to change the sheets!
• "I am Gleahan! Of Eastvale! Hero of Calokett! VANQUISHER of the Iron Bulls! Champion of Justice!
• Rod Steiger as Napoleon in Waterloo.
  • There's also his role as the priest in The Amityville Horror (1979).
  • Not to mention as a Cuban crime boss in The Specialist.
• Tony Vogel as Ferragu in Hearts and Armour, a very loose treatment (one critic called it a medieval spaghetti western) of Orlando Furioso. Running around in giant chicken armour definitively helps the overall impression.
• In The Comedy of Terrors, While Black (played by Basil Rathbone) is fairly restrained in public, he is found by Gillie to be reciting Macbeth in bed, even going so far as to get up and pretend to fight with a not-so-pretend sword he keeps as decoration on his wall. After his Sanity Slippage, he continues to quote Shakespeare as he goes on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Referenced in To Be or Not to Be, where Greenberg, a Jewish stage actor, tells one of his cast-mates "What you are, I wouldn't eat."
• Withnail and I revolves around Richard E. Grant as a failed actor who basically lives life as hammily as possible.
  BASTARDS! YOU'LL ALL SUFFERRRRRRR! I'LL SHOW THE LOT OF YOOOUUU! I'M GOING TO BE A STAAAAAAAAARRRRR!
• As pointed out by Brad Jones, Hillary's America has a few things you wouldn't expect to complain about a documentary, such as bad acting. Case in point, Mikaela Krantz as a young Hillary Clinton, a borderline caricature in how much mugging, shouting, and laughing is put into her performance.
• Bobcat Goldthwait's Zed from the Police Academy series, at first a manic gang leader, then a very hyper police recruit who takes No Indoor Voice to insane levels (one scene has him knocking down a door by shouting at it!).
• The Death of Stalin takes Marshal Georgy Zhukov, one of the most (deservedly) heavily-decorated generals in military history and the man who won the Great Patriotic War in spite of Josef Stalin's mad antics, gives him an AK-47 and a booming Yorkshire accent, and has him barging around Moscow being a general (heh Four-Star Badass who engages in much Gay Bravado and punches the Soviet Union's most powerful rapist in the face twice.
  "ROIGHT. Wot's a wor 'ero got ta do to get some LUBRICATION 'round 'ere?" [Cue Establishing Character Moment]
• Kild TV: When Milton Web assumes the Dr. Perseco persona to perform on the Show Within a Show, he seems to start channeling Tim Curry.
• Deputy Stu Wargle from Phantoms is initially rather restrained and stoic, but after being assimilated by the Ancient Enemy he goes into full-on scenery-chewing, mustache twirling villainy.
  "IT'S LIMBO TIME! HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?!"
• Talk Radio features Michael Wincott as Kent, a Loony Fan of Shock Jock Barry Champlain. The result is glorious ham as he screams at the top of his lungs and behaves like a moronic teenager.
• Doctor... Series:
  • Sir Lancelot Spratt, the head surgeon at St. Swithin's Hospital. He's big, brash, booming, bold, and flies off the handle at the slightest provocation.
  • Captain Hogg from Doctor at Sea (also played by James Robertson Justice) is one just as much as Sir Lancelot, but when he mixes his pills with alcohol, it hits all new levels:
    Captain Hogg: Mutinous scum! I'll have the Board of Trade on the lot of you for this!

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