Best Performance as a Disabled Person

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Lets put a smile on that block
Bit of a strange topic here, and one that may have been raised before but i am yet to find it. Started talking about this at work and couldnt actually come up with a great deal of examples.

Who do you think has given the best performance of a disabled person, or a character with diminished physical and mental ability? (Im trying to be as PC about this as possible, so i hope i don't offend anyone!)

This CAN include actors and actresses who themselves are in fact disabled, and actors and actresses portraying a disabled person.

The first ones that come to mind for me are:

Dustin Hoffman

Rain Man

Sean Penn

I Am Sam

Leonardo Dicaprio

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Also, why is that they choose not to let disabled actors and actresses who are capable, play these roles in the first place?
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Chappie doesn't like the real world
I liked Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, and Javier Bardem in The Sea Inside, but Daniel Day Lewis gets my vote for the best performance in My Left Foot.



I agree the Forest Gump was a good one. Also agree with BBT in Sling Blade. Althought Dustin Hoffman was great too!
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I liked Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, but I think Cliff Robertson in Charly beats him.



Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot

Marlee Beth Matlin in Children of a Lesser God

John Hurt in The Elephant Man

William H. Macy in Door to Door
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Definitely Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot. I have great appreciation for any actor that can pull-off a disabled person so brilliantly without looking as if they aren't actually disabled! Well Done!



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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Mathieu Amalric's potrayal of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a former editor of Elle magazine, until he suffered a massive stroke in 95, which left him completely mute, and paralyzed except for his left eye. the book the film is based on was a composed autobiography by a series of blinks, and he passed away shortly after it was published.

amazing, but depressing movie.

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Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives
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Steven Robertson acts cerebral palsy in Inside I'm dancing (Rory O'Shea was here)



Prob. not what you're looking for but I'm gonna go with the freaks in Freaks, the dwarfs in Even Dwarfs Started Small, and all the seemingly brain-damaged folks in Heart of Glass. Of course the point in all of these movies is that the entire world is damaged, hobbled, crooked, stupid, nuts, cruel, absurd. They're worlds I like to visit for a couple hours at a time in some of my favorite movies.



Returning to Tod Browning (and why the hell not?!) and adhering more to what I think the thread is aiming at: Lon Chaney Sr. (and his foot-double) in The Unknown. Maybe not what you're looking for since all the folks mentioned in this thread are universally cute, adorable, sympathetic, teach us Important Lessons about loving and so on. Interesting, that. Think I prefer the former. If I need a lesson in love I'll watch Bergman. Haha just kidding. If I need a lesson in love I'll ask my girlfriend for one, not some method actor simpleton. If I want to be entertained/let my imagination wander and roam I'll enter the world of Browning/Herzog that is dark, cruel, conflicted and mysterious.

[EDIT] I've just looked it up, and I think I will add Diving Bell and the Butterfly to my to-see list.



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Definitely Josh Brolin as George Bush in W. ;-)



The People's Republic of Clogher
Hammy Lord Larry Olivier in the title role of Richard III (1955)?



One of the few sequels to be better than the original...

Or what about Kenneth More in Reach For The Sky?

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Judi Dench as Iris Murdoch losing her mind to Alzheimers.

Nigel Hawthorne as King George III in the Madness of King George, losing his mind possibly suffering from porphyria.



I was talking about this yesterday, and I was saying that I think actors are stealing partsc away from real handicaped people.
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...uh the post is up there...