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I've been a part of things in which the cast and others involved are like, "WTF, is (the director) thinking?" What was seen as weak choices by many was seen as strong by the director, and we know who decides what is left in things.
As for this 95/5 thing, I do think there are only a handful of truly great great actors, and there are alot of good actors. I think that the key word that people is overlooking in the poster's theory is "perceived" good acting.
As for Norton, I never really got him as what many hailed him to be this generation's De Niro or Brando as what many said about the casting about "The Score" - 3 generations of "the actor." He got good external qualities ("realistic" and "spontaneous-like" voice, delivery, body movement, expression, etc.), but never seemed to have the internal aspects of acting - I dread this word, as it has become a perverted emphasis by Strasberg Method actors (*not Stanislavski*), emotion...or subtext or weight.
Truly great actors got both the external and internal realized in roles.
IMHO, the purest way to judge an actor's skills is to first read the script before seeing their performance then you can see what they brought to the weak/strong written role in the weak/strong script...but that's unrealistic because of time and resources. Of course, what you see may not have been their strongest choices as the director/producers get the final say.
Acting is a tricky thing, too. If the actor becomes concerned with being out-acted by his castmates then his focus is self-indulgent as the actor is the concern, not the character's objective. Sometimes a role doesn't call for much so then the actor may be judged unfairly and criticized as being out-acted by his castmates. In this case, we're looking at a Sean Penn and not a 70's De Niro...or Average Joe from the Actor's Studio and not a Takashi Shimura.
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