Performances by Non-Actors

[ChrisIII]

Surprisingly, the first one to come to mind was Rosie Hunttington-Whitley. As far a I know, she was a model who caught Michael Bay's eye, and he cast her as the replacement for Megan Fox in Transformers 3. I thought she actually did a pretty decent job in a very thin role.

She was pretty good in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD.

[Powerboy]

I thought that Rowdy Roddy Piper was a surprisingly good actor in the few movies he did.

[caj]

Country singer Tim McGraw has done some decent work in film and tv.

[ChrisIII]

After his country music career, Sausage products and TV host stuff, Jimmy Dean did a bit of acting in the 70s and 80s. He is perhaps best known as Willard Whyte in Diamonds Are Forever, a reclusive billionaire who Blofeld impersonates and imprisons; after Bond frees him he helps Bond in the film's second half.

[j9ac9k]

I don't know if he ever had any kind of training, but Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs was pretty funny in "Get Him to the Greek"

[Jim Kelly]

And some movies are going for a verisimilitude. Movies about a particular subculture, where casting actors just won't get at the truth of that environment. So they look for non-actors to play many of the parts--to play themselves--because no amount of research is going to give an actor the understanding that they have. There are many movies like this--I just can't think of them at the moment.

CIDADE DE DEUS [City of God] (2002), directed by Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund.

Wikipedia: "The only professional actor with years of filming experience was Matheus Nachtergaele, who played the supporting role of Carrot. Most of the remaining cast were from real-life favelas, and in some cases, even the real-life City of God favela itself. According to Meirelles, amateur actors were used for two reasons: the lack of available professional black actors, and the desire for authenticity. Meirelles explained: 'Today I can open a casting call and have 500 black actors, but just ten years ago this possibility did not exist. In Brazil, there were three or four young black actors and at the same time I felt that actors from the middle class could not make the film. I needed authenticity.'"

In terms of individual actors, there was Bruno S., who Werner Herzog cast in JEDER FÜR SICH UND GOTT GEGEN ALLER (1974)--which was released in North America with the title "The Enigma of Kasper Hauser." The performance by Bruno S. is so distinctive that no trained actor would have been able to reproduce it. Herzog then used Bruno S. in one other movie, STROSZEK (1977).

For THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), William Wyler cast non-actor Harold Russell, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES swept the awards that year, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

[ChrisIII]

I don't know if he ever had any kind of training, but Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs was pretty funny in "Get Him to the Greek"

He had roles in a few films before then, received a lot of acclaim for his role in "Monster's Ball" for one.