Ham and Cheese

This trope in its purest, most DELICIOUS form.

"You still refuse to ACCEPT...my godhood?! KEEP your own God! In fact, this might be a good time to PRAY to Him! [levitates into the air] For I beheld Satan as he FELL FRROM HEAVENN! LIKE LIGHTNIINNGG!!!"

—Raul Julia as M. Bison, pictured right.

Say you're an actor, and a damn good one at that. You're hot stuff in Hollywood, with directors throwing money at your feet to be in their film. So you pick the one that gets you the most cash, or has the most promising blurb, or is based on a book you've read. It'll all be fine, right?

WROOOOOOOONG!!

You arrive on set to find what seems to be an EXCUSE for a film, complete with cheap Special Effects, bad actors and a worse script. So what do you do? You could storm off and refuse to associate with the film ever again, you could try with all your might to make it work... or you could unleash The Hog, Chew The Scenery into dust, and Milk The Giant Cow dry.

If it's going to be a (well-remunerated) bad movie, you might as well enjoy yourself, eh? And who knows? You might even end up saving the film.

Often these people are playing the villains, thus overlapping with Evil Is Hammy.

Compare One-Scene Wonder; both roles/actors in these films play memorable, often over-the-top enjoyable performances and can make them one of the best parts of a film... which can sadly become the only good parts if the film is bad.

Can overlap with What the Hell, Casting Agency? and Awesome, Dear Boy.

Compare Chewing the Scenery, Wag the Director.

Contrast Took the Bad Film Seriously.

Examples of Ham and Cheese include:

Advertising

  • Those Wacky Nazis had a series of propaganda ads called Liese Und Miese, in which Liese, a patriotic woman, did things that were beneficial to Germany, and Miese, a traitor, did things like listen to foreign radio broadcasts and talked to spies. Miese was played by an actress who was secretly half-Jewish and deliberately made Miese extremely likable and entertaining.
  • Listen in awe as Gilbert Gottfried tells us of Shoe-Dini! It's not just a shoehorn, it's a shoehorn ON A STICK!!


Films -- Animated

PROCEED. ON YOUR WAY TO OBLIVION!

    • Most of the voice actors in the French-language dub of the Transformers cartoon are incredibly deadpan, even when the situation would dictate the character be one step short of giving themselves a robo-stroke. By contrast, the voice actor for Megatron plays his part brilliantly, but comes across as chewing the scenery because everyone else is flat as a pancake. This is especially egregious when he's conversing with Soundwave, who's voiced by a francophone version of Ben Stein on sedatives.
  • Eric Idle as "Evil Martin" in The Secret of NIMH 2. Probably the best part about that movie.
  • Malcolm McDowelll as Lord Maliss in the "Snow White" animated knock-off Happily Ever After. Also Ed Asner as his henchman, the owl Scowl.


Films -- Live-Action

  • Raul Julia just seems to love this trope. If he had a reason to invoke this trope - any reason - he would.
  • The Core had a cast of veteran actors, including big profile stars Aaron Eckhart and Oscar winner Hilary Swank. Yet Stanley Tucci seems to have been the only person in it that was aware of the utter ridiculousness of the plot and thus provided a really campy performance. He is arguably the most entertaining thing in the movie.
    • You can't necessarily tell from his performance, but Aaron Eckhart later admitted in an interview that he could barely keep a straight face through most of his lines.

"None of us could believe our eyes when we finally saw who else had been cast. These guys are all great actors; Stanley Tucci, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Bruce Greenwood. We kind of all looked at each and said 'you too?' ... Stanley Tucci and I got to manhandle some nuclear bombs, and there were times we were laughing so hard that he almost literally went to the bathroom in his space suit."

      • The director himself gives as good as his cast in the DVD commentary. It's either exquisite self-parody turned up to eleven, or he really believes he was "staying true to his vision" and that the movie is untrammelled, if under-appreciated, genius. Either would explain a great deal.
  • Uwe Boll is notorious for crapass movies, but the first |Blood Rayne movie is actually somewhat bearable because Udo Kier had some competent acting ability (he played Yuri from Command And Conquer: Red Alert 2).

Time: What were you thinking when you accepted a role in BloodRayne? It's hard to imagine someone so gifted not realizing what a terrible film that would be!
Kingsley: I don't know whether to be upset or flattered by that question. To be honest, I have always wanted to play a vampire, with the teeth and the long black cape. Let's say that my motives were somewhat immature for doing it.

    • How appropriate that Uwe Boll had Ben Kingsley and Udo Kier in a film, but to him, a topless Kristanna Loken is what made it bearable.
  • Jeremy Irons, in the |Dungeons and Dragons and Eragon movies, who manages to outham the entire cast and special effects department by virtue of his eyebrows alone.
    • And the guy who plays Murtaugh is clearly having the time of his life.
      • Chris Egan had only a bit part as Roran, but managed to spin it into a staring role on the vastly superior but tragically short-lived Kings alongside the legendary Ian McShane.
    • Irons and John Malkovich also co-hammed in The Man in the Iron Mask, along with Gerard Depardieu, playing aging Musketeers. All three must have been paid per cubic meter of scenery devoured, although Jeremy Irons takes the cake for delivering lines like "It's Judgement Day" and making them So Bad It's Good.
    • Malkovich got into the whole silly, OTT atmosphere in Con Air as well. To the point where he's standing on the ramp of a plane in flight, holding a pistol to the head of a soft toy and yelling at an assault chopper.
    • The Riff Trax for Eragon refers to John Malkovich as "the ham's ham. He makes Al Pacino look subtle."
  • Aasif Mandvi plays Admiral Zhao in The Last Airbender pretty much the same way he usually portrays himself on The Daily Show or other comedy-based productions. Thus, lines that were supposedly serious come across as hilarious when he reads them ("This is a SCROLL FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY!")
  • Richard E. Grant as the flamboyant, over-the-top villain in Bruce Willis' musical heist movie Hudson Hawk. From his very first scene, it is wonderfully obvious that Grant is hamming it Up to Eleven. Richard E. Grant also has very interesting views in hindsight of the film, if you can find interviews on the web somewhere.
    • It's probably easier to find his published diaries (With Nails - geddit?) which include Hudson Hawk among many film set recollections. They're a good chuckle.
    • All the more interesting as Richard E. Grant is a famous method actor, showing very little restraint in the lunacy of the film.
    • Don't forget Minerva ! Bunny ... ball ball !!
  • Ewan McGregor in The Island. He also shows a bit of it in the Star Wars prequels, although generally he's just reading his lines, rather like Sir Alec Guinness did in the same role for the original film. He enjoys himself much better when fighting than when talking, really.
  • Alec Guinness in Scrooge gives the most upbeat, sarcastic Jacob Marley performance in history. Even during the scene in HELL of all places, he's skippping around and milking every bit of ham he can out of his lines.
  • Richard Burton did this a few times, The Wild Geese is a case in point. Burton also had an unnerving habit of combining Ham and Cheese with Took the Bad Film Seriously. Exorcist II the Heretic may be the best example.
  • Kirk Douglas as the title character in The Villain. There is simply no way that he read that script (it's essentially a live-action Roadrunner cartoon) and expected it to be anything but a big, luscious, gooey block of Velveeta.
  • Frank Langella as Skeletor in Masters of the Universe. He's always enjoyable, especially with his Evil Gloating. Especially near the end. Langella loved hamming it up so much that he doesn't even consider his role an Old Shame; he actually says it's one of his most favorite roles he's ever played!
  • Brazilian movie Zoando na TV is stupid, cheap and would be unwatchable if not for the hammy and hilarious Miguel Fallabella
  • Alan Rickman's completely over-the-top, campy performance in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. He must have realized the film was going to be critically killed, because he signed onto the film on the condition that he get to play the part however he wanted. Similar to Raul Julia above, he also got to be a Trope Namer due to this film.
  • Tilda Swinton in the not-really-critically-acclaimed Hellblazer adaptation Constantine. She seems to be having a fair bit of fun with the overacting opportunities of her role, and is damn sexy while at it, too (which is sort of inevitable if you have Tilda Swinton playing an insane, androgynous angel with well-pedicured feet and impressive martial arts skills...).
  • Some of Peter Sellers' films from the early 1970s, when he desperately needed the work, most notably the unreleased-until-the-VHS era comedy-adventure Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974). David Lodge, a friend, commented to Sellers biographer Alexander Walker "It was a case of the wrong people in charge of the right people." Luckily, Peter was playing a bedraggled pirate baddie, so he was free to be hammy and took the opportunity.
  • Max von Sydow as Ming in the Flash Gordon movie. A touch more restrained than many on this list, but definitely having fun with the part, and Topol as Zarkov is, ironically, a Jewish ham.
    • Both of them must have realized that you have to work hard to be remembered in a movie with Brian Blessed.
  • In Demolition Man, Wesley Snipes is having the time of his life as over-the-top bad guy Simon Phoenix.
  • The Batman movies have a history of this.
    • Christopher Walken, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer each seem to be hamming it up to the max (in Walken's case, literally) in Batman Returns. Come on, which is the more over-the-top goofy - Penguin giving a rousing speech to a group of penguins with rockets, Catwoman giving herself a tongue bath in public, or Max Shreck's speech for Christmas?
    • Batman Forever. It has Jim Carrey babbling about "brainwave manipulation", stating that his neon wardrobe keeps him "safe while he's jogging at night." Ham and cheese on rye. One gets the impression that Tommy Lee Jones was using the film as an excuse to enjoy himself as well. Case in point, the entire sequence involving the attack on Wayne Manor.
    • Uma Thurman's performance in Batman and Robin. She clearly thought she was signing up for something good (Batman? And George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger are gonna be in it? Sounds awesome!) and then...got the script. And saw the sickeningly neon costumes. She plays Poison Ivy as a completely over-the-top villainess, and she's clearly having a fabulous time doing it. One of the very few saving graces of that movie. The same goes for Schwarzenegger, who admitted to hating the Mr. Freeze armor he had to keep wearing. He sure looks like he's having fun though.
  • In the 2004 King Arthur film, Stellan Skarsgård as Saxon king Cerdic. Skarsgård also said in a later interview that he deliberately inflected his character's voice with a slight Texan accent as a Take That to George W. Bush, pretty much just for the hell of it.
  • Laurence Olivier in the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, complete with period-wrong costumes, casting that had the lead actors twenty years older than their characters, and inexplicable plot alterations that turned it into a farcical shadow of the book. Olivier's Darcy was a smarmy, smirking, effeminately fluttering dandy whose only function was to be shot down repeatedly by Elizabeth. From Olivier, a performance that bad had to be an intentional piss-take.
  • Christopher Plummer in the horror of hysterical proportions that was Starcrash. "IMPERIAL BATTLESHIP! HALT... THE FLOW... OF TIME!!!"
  • James Marsters as Piccolo and Chow Yun Fat as Master Roshi in Dragonball Evolution.
  • Dennis Hopper in Super Mario Bros seems to not want to waste any good acting on the movie.
  • Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog in Street Fighter the Legend of Chun Li. He seems to be the only one in the movie aware of how bad the entire thing is, but is also the only named character who isn't treating the whole thing as Serious Business. Accordingly, he's the only character that looks like he's actually enjoying himself and shamelessly hams up his Scary Black Man role.
    • On that same note, there was Chris Klein, who was channeling two parts Christian Slater and one part David Caruso in his portrayal of Charlie Nash.
  • Duncan pulls a similar performance as Kingpin in Daredevil.
    • This movie also gave us Colin Farrell in a Hamfully stunning performance as Bullseye, a giggling, frothing, leather-clad Irishman. You just know he's taking the piss the whole time.
  • There is a terrible Made For TV horror movie based on a Dean Koontz novel called Intensity. It is a movie littered with awful actors and an Idiot Plot for the ages, containing so many nonsense plot points and moron characters that it is virtually unwatchable... until you see that the killer is played by none other than John C. McGinley, who makes it his business to play the Ax Crazy villain so over-the-top entertaining that you giggle with delight virtually every moment he's on screen.
  • Michael York's performance in Megiddo: The Omega Code 2: what is otherwise a terribly acted, terrible special effect filled Christian B-Movie becomes a So Bad It's Good laugh riot solely due to York playing his role as the Antichrist with record breaking amounts of ham. You can tell he's enjoying himself immensely.
  • The Arnold Schwarzenegger apocalypse flick End of Days. Despite the presence of Kevin Pollack and Rod Steiger, the best thing in the film just may be Gabriel Byrne's Satan. He is all too aware that he is in a bad film, and swaggers through it like a drunken rock star. His character's introductory scene (after being possessed by Satan) involves him walking out of a restaurant's bathroom, making out with his possessee's date while copping a feel, then blowing up the restaurant for no reason and doing an Unflinching Walk out of the flames. The director reported near-fights among the female extras over who would get to kiss Mr. Byrne.
  • Star Wars gives us Ian McDiarmid's performance as Emperor Palpatine, even in the Return of the Jedi, which earned a much better critical reception than the prequels later did. McDiarmid pulled off the impressive feat of securing three more blockbuster film roles with a Ham and Cheese performance in that film. In the prequels, he was clearly having a grand old time playing a scenery-chewing, Evil Overlord with UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAH. He not only gained critical acclaim for his performance as Palpatine, but he is remembered as having perhaps the best performance in the entire prequel trilogy. It helps that, although the prequels as a whole aren't too well recieved, Ian is genuinely fond of his character and thus plays him the best way possible.
"Palpatine is the only good thing about the movie that's actually in the movie."
—Harry Plinkett
  • Kenneth Branagh was clearly having a good deal of fun in the terrible 1999 rendition of Wild Wild West. His hamtastic performance is the only really redeeming thing about that movie (besides Salma Hayek).
  • Komodo, the Big Bad of Warriors of Virtue is... astonishing. The actor seems to spend the entire film on the verge of bursting into laughter, and frequently gives in. Wow. What was he on?
    • Given that the same actor played DuPont in Equilibrium and Robert the Bruce in Braveheart (both under a lot less makeup), he is clearly capable of turning in a subtle performance. Given what he had to work with, he must've just decided to pop some E and go Looney Tunes.
  • Sean Connery as Sir August de Wynter in The Avengers 1998.
  • While we're still on the subject of Highlander, The Guardian acts ludicrously over the top in every scene he's in in Highlander the Source. As Spoony pointed out, every word out of his mouth is a wisecrack.
  • A recurring joke has been that the Ocean's Trilogy was simply an excuse for George Clooney and Brad Pitt to get together and have some fun with all their friends regardless of whether or not the movies were any good. Surprisingly, they are pretty decent.
    • This is what the original Ocean's 11 movie was for the Rat Pack as well.
  • Brian Cox seems to be the only cast member from Troy who thinks "Ah, It Will Never Catch On.", judging by his performance. "This is a man drunk with power," he told an interviewer, "It's the best part in the film!"
    • He is outdone by a fan of Troy in this scene commentary: "The greatest battle of all time! MWHAHAHAHAHA!"
    • Brad Pitt and even Orlando Bloom had moments of this in Troy. Brad Pitt, fully capable of all ranges in performance, looks halfway comatose unless he's got a shirtless scene, in which case he turns into a Large Ham. Bloom is clearly out to lunch for half the movie and has fun with it when his character gets lines.
  • G.I. Joe the Rise of Cobra is a cheesy, stupid movie. Nobody took that film seriously, but Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt realize exactly what kind of movie they're in and have fun with it. The problem is that there's not much Hammy latitude for the good guys. Marlon--"Whoo!", Storm Shadow and Baroness actually seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, though. It's part of the reason why it's so fun.
  • In his long career, Sir Christopher Lee played this trope many times. An awesome actor, he nevertheless played (mostly villains) in many, many awful B flicks, and then deliberately set his acting to over-the-top mode. As a result, these movies often ended up into the So Bad It's Good zone, almost only because of him. The Wicker Man comes to mind as a perfect example and it is now considered to be one of the greatest suspense movies of all-time.
    • It probably helps that he'll rarely flinch at any project offered him. He once did the narration for a Rhapsody of Fire album, back when they were still called Rhapsody, and stated in the interview that he was told when he was young that a person should try everything in life, except murder and incest.
  • Al Pacino, from iconic performances in classic films like The Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon, was widely believed to be one of the greatest actors in the history of film. Al "HOO-AH!!" Pacino, from oversized performances in films like S1m0ne, Gigli and 88 Minutes, is widely believed to enjoy Money, Dear Boy.
  • EVERYONE in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension but especially John Lithgow. It's just one reason why it's such an awesome movie instead of entirely forgettable.
  • Uma Thurman and Steve Coogan seem to be the only actors having a blast in the otherwise bad and forgettable film adaptation of Percy Jackson and The Olympians. And it shows in their over-the-top but awesome performances.
  • Nicolas Cage's overacting is part of the reason for the humor in many scenes of the So Bad It's Good remake of The Wicker Man. He admitted in an interview that after finding out he was going to punch a woman wearing a bear suit in it it became impossible to take it seriously, and it shows in the film's much plentiful Narm.
    • Really pick almost any Nic Cage movie at random, he's made a career of overacting in implausible action movies that would be utterly forgettable if he wasn't Chewing the Scenery
  • Completely by accident, John Travolta does this a few times in Battlefield Earth. It's accidental because he thought the film was going to be great, otherwise he might have been doing that in every scene.
  • Michael Sheen, who joined the cast of Twilight to make his daughter happy. You can tell he's aware that he's in a film that caters almost exclusively to screaming tweens, none of whom will give him a second glance, and he hams it up magnificently.
  • Ralph Fiennes again in the Clash of the Titans remake, playing Hades in that film. In the midst of a mostly negative review in the Washington Post, the review comments that "Fiennes' appearance provides a jolt. Arriving always with his head curiously fixed within a cloud of swirling black smog, he knows how to make an entrance. His part is surely the best in the movie, and he's clearly having fun."
    • Liam Neeson comes seriously close to out-hamming him, if not succeeding. Either way, the real clash in this movie is the Ham-to-Ham Combat both actors are clearly enjoying the hell out of. RELEASE THE KRAKEN LARGE HAM!!!
  • Maximilian Schell in the otherwise ghastly The Black Hole.
  • Many critics have noted that Nicole Parker is basically the only part of a Seltzer and Friedberg "film" that's even remotely enjoyable to watch. Critics noted that while her roles in Epic Movie and Disaster Movie basically consist of just dressing up like celebrities and other movie characters and delivering some very low-grade "jokes", she actually puts some effort in it, and overacts with a style to the point where she can almost get a laugh.
  • Christopher Walken in The Country Bears. It's one of Disney's mostly forgettable 'family films'. However, Walken's completely over-the-top performance as the evil banker makes it a lot more tolerable.

"THIS IS NOT OVAH! .....BEARS!!!

  • Gary Oldman in the film version of Lost in Space.
    • Consider this - he had Jonathan Harris' incredibly over the top portrayal of Dr. Smith from the TV series to try and live up to.
  • In the 1998 version of Les Misérables, Geoffrey Rush as Inspector Javert steals the show, and manages to be awesome despite his character being forced to play the villain instead of the original noble antagonist. But man, does he enjoy! And then he suddenly gives us that Tear Jerker ending.
  • ALL of the killers from low-budget satire/horror $la$her$ hammed it up like pro-wrestlers (quite beautifully considering they were all non-actors). Justified Trope, since they're entertainers as well as psychopaths, and play it to the hilt for their studio audience.
  • The new A-Team movie: The main cast looks like they're having an absolute blast, especially Liam Neeson and Sharlto Copley.
    • As well they should. If you watch an episode of the old show, the original cast was having a blast, too (especially Dwight Schultz as the original Murdock).
      • George Peppard hams it up like crazy in this show, but his interviews after the show ended made it clear it was a perfectly miserable experience for him (especially his relationship with Mr. T which was fractured until just before his death).
  • SLC Punk! is a basic stoner movie, but Til Schweiger shows up as Mark, a unhinged wealthy European, and steals his scenes with this weird wild-eyed enthusiasm (as seen here), even though he's not super-loud, like some examples on this list.

Mark (brandishing a laser disc): Dere's a movie in dere! * smiles gleefully*

  • Michael Gambon's performance as Lt. General Leland Zevo in Toys. And getting hammier and hammier as the movie approaches its climax.
  • About 50% of the ouevre of Christopher Walken is this, especially since The Nineties. It is an article of faith in Hollywood that, if you have a real stinker of a movie, just give a supporting role to Walken, and that'll be good for an extra two or three stars on IMDb. And you know what? It's true.
  • Alec Baldwin tries his hand at this as the slimy bad guy in The Cat in the Hat. Mike Myers tries as well, but . . . fails.
  • Eric Roberts in The Expendables. It appears as if he read a textbook on action movie villainy and then turned it up to eleven. It also fits in with the overall not-taking-itself-too-seriously vibe of the film.
    • Read? Eric Roberts wrote the book on action movie villainy!
  • Congo was an excellent book by Michael Crichton. Frank Marshall is a shitty director. So someone brilliant got Bruce Campbell to show up for five minutes just so killer gorillas could throw human eyeballs at him and then slaughter him off-camera as he screams. Then they brought Tim Curry in as a "Romanian Philanthropist" who is "Travelink de vorld und doink goot!" - and the gorillas kill him too! Delroy Lindo shows up too, asking for "More" money, calling Tim Curry a "Big Bag of Shit" and telling him to STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE! He stays home, so he doesn't get killed by gorillas.
    • And finally, Ernie Hudson as the "Great White Hunter" of the group though he "happens to be black!"
  • Most of the halfway decent actors in films by Bruno Mattei, Joe D'Amato, or any of their contemporaries do this. A great example being Gabriel Carrera's performance in SS Girls.
  • Not that it's a bad movie by any means but Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson both seem very out of place in Easy A. A rather witty teen comedy is obviously quite different from their usual roles and both clearly took the opportunity to have as much fun in it as the younger cast, and it shows.
  • Kenneth McMillan in David Lynch's adaptation of Dune. It's quite impressive to be wearing a ridiculous fatsuit and covered in disgusting oozing boils, and still have your actual performance turn out to be the most memorable thing about your character. Is it any wonder the man drank himself to death a few years later?
    • "I want you to squeeeeze this part in the film! Squeeeeze and squeeeze until the role is sucked dry! Give me SPICE!"
  • Paul Giamatti is clearly having fun in Shoot'Em Up.
  • Hook: Dustin Hoffman was clearly having a ball playing the titular character. To this day, he actually likes having "Hook" as a nickname for himself.
  • Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor in (the largely percieved dissapointing) Superman Returns has a blast with his role.
  • Kate Nauta in The Transporter 2. It's pretty clear from her line delivery and facial expressions that once she read the script (which calls for her character, Lola, to spend half her screentime wearing a soaking-wet negligee, disheveled hair and runny eye makeup while dual-wielding pistols and gunning down all manner of individuals), she decided to take it as far as she could, and she looks to be the only person not to deliver the cornball material in a serious manner.
  • Aaliyah, Stuart Townsend and Vincent Perez all seem fully aware of how silly Queen of the Damned is, and they all look like they're having a great time chewing on the scenery. Townsend and Aaliyah in particular really go to town with it, making ridiculous overblown gestures and milking relatively mundane lines to the point where it's damn near hilarious.

Live-Action TV

  • One internet reviewer thought that Patrick Troughton, as the Doctor, was hamming it up out of boredom in the Doctor Who serial The Dominators, a story that most people find excruciatingly boring.
    • The 1979 story The Horns of Nimon. Despite Graham Crowden's legendary chewing of scenery there was plenty of set left for other actors to dine on. One of the other characters - the co-pilot, played by Malcolm Terris - has the catchphrase "WEAKLING SCUM!" that he delivers in increasingly over-the-top pantomimic ways. Even more delicious is that during his death scene he overacts so spectacularly that his trousers visibly split. Pop him between two slices of bread and you'd have a ham and cheese sandwich you could use to beat a bear to death.
      • According to Doctor Who Magazine, "WEAKLING SCUM!!!" wasn't even in the script, Terris came up with it all by himself.
    • Speaking of Doctor Who, there's Timelash. Paul Darrow gives a performance that has to be seen to be disbelieved. He later said that this was revenge for Colin Baker's Large Ham tendencies when he appeared on Blakes Seven as Bayban the Butcher.
    • Eric Roberts seemed to be doing this as the Master in the TV movie.
  • You're Christopher Walken. You've just arrived at a new not-yet-opened hotel, the set of a music video starring only yourself and a wire rig. What do you do? You give them the best over-the-top performance of your life.
  • On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one episode's plot forced the main cast to act out the roles in Dr. Bashir's James Bond holosuite program. Avery Brooks, in the role of an intentionally campy Omnicidal Maniac Bond villain, wolfed down the scenery and went back for seconds.
  • The BBC documentary series Simon Schama's Power of Art focuses less on documentation and more on ridiculously dramatized reenactments of famous artists throughout history. Particularly notable is Andy "Gollum" Serkis as Vincent Van Gogh.
  • Christien Anholt as Eon in Ben 10: Race Against Time.
  • The cast of Canadian Musketeer series Young Blades used to veer madly between narm-tastic attempts to take the bad show seriously, and bouts of outrageous tongue-in-cheek ham. The latter approach was a lot more successful, as it was often damn hilarious to watch and caused the series to tip over into So Bad It's Good territory. Robert Sheehan (King Louis XIV) was probably the only cast member with Ham and Cheese as his default setting - his camp and outlandish performance was easily the most entertaining part of the show.
  • In the later seasons of Law and Order SVU, B.D. Wong can occasionally be seen doing this with some of Dr. Huang's increasingly silly Mister Exposition/Captain Obvious dialogue.
  • Peter Dickson, the famous Voiceover Man of shows such as The X Factor and Britains Got Talent, is well known and loved for his overdramatic voiceovers, most brilliantly amplified in a BBC comedy bit where he does the voice at home to a long-suffering wife.
  • While David Caruso is known for being a somewhat pretentious asshole, he is really over the top as CSI: Miami's Horatio Caine. He said that the script forced him to do it initially, as in early episodes of the first season he appears to be more humane. Later on, he's made of ham and cheese, and his performance... *shades on* is damn tasty. YEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
  • The entire cast of Gilligan's Island was painfully aware of the show's caliber, and often turned to this trope for solace. Jim Backus still managed to stand out.
  • Barbara Goodson (Rita), Jason Narvy (Skull), Paul Schrier (Bulk), and Robert Axelrod (various monsters, Lord Zedd) clearly get a kick out of their roles in Power Rangers.
    • One interesting example from the series is the character of Divatox from the Turbo movie and season and the Space season. In the movie, the latter part of the Turbo season, and all of In Space, she was played by Hilary Shepard Turner in this manner. For many fans, she was all that made any of Turbo watchable. But for the first 60% or so of that season, she was away on maternity leave and replaced by Carol Hoyt. Carol took the role much more seriously, which came across as rather boring and generic. Most fans still prefer Hilary's version and were happy to have her back.
  • Everyone in The Cape. EVERYONE.
  • Barbara Kellerman is clearly doing this in the BBC TV version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, playing the White Witch as an over-the-top villainess in a performance similar to Faye Dunaway's in Mommy Dearest and Uma Thurman's in Batman and Robin. Her overacting is hysterical, such as her Big No to Edmund.
  • Bronson Pinchot in The Langoliers. Yes, believe it or not, Bronson Pinchot can actually turn the ham up even more.


Professional Wrestling

  • While being a Large Ham is basically in the job description, special mention should go to Dusty Rhodes. Many wrestling observers saw his time in the WWE in the 1980s as shameful, as it involved him dancing around the ring in a polka-dot suit and getting his head stuck in toilets. Rhodes, however, has since said that was the most fun he had as a wrestler, since he didn't have to worry about booking duties and backstage politics like he did in WCW.
    • For that matter, his sons. Goldust has won numerous "worst character of the year" awards, but he goes so over the top in his portrayal and voice that it's such a joy to watch. And for "Dashing" Cody Rhodes...well...just hit him in the face. You can clearly see how much fun he has in his responses.
  • The Rock seemed to be trying to top him during his later appearances.
  • Chris Jericho has made a career out of trying to out-do them both.
  • Shawn Michaels used this to do a Take That to Hulk Hogan, when backstage politics lead to him getting buried in a match. Michaels, rather than try to turn in the normal top-tier performance you're supposed to try for a PPV, spent the whole match flying around the ring [dead link] in ways that would make a Ragdoll Physics programmer think he was overdoing it.
  • A lot of the humor CM Punk provides will come from his intentional overacting or telling an intentionally bad joke.


Videogames

  • Part of what makes the Command & Conquer series (particularly Red Alert 2 and 3) so great is the sheer hamminess you get out of the cutscenes. Indeed, by 3, the developers decided to go so far deep into pure Camp that they managed to snag some pretty well-known talent (including George Takei, Tim Curry, and JK Simmons ("Juno's Dad" "J. Jonah Jameson" "BR" "Da Chief" "Emil Skoda" "Cave Johnson, we're done here") as the leaders of the Empire of the Rising Sun, the Soviet Union, and the Allies, respectively) who were obviously in it for the fun value.
  • Metal Wolf Chaos is, arguably, an enforced version of this. The plot and writing is so completely ridiculous that anything less than extreme doses of B-movie overdramatics and yelling would've ruined the charm. Note that this is a Japanese game with No Export for You - yet it is entirely in over-the-top English and recorded by people who speak English natively for a game released only in Japan.
  • Out of the utter train wreck that is |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Dan Green's gloriously over-the-top performance as Mephiles the Dark is quite easily the most enjoyable part of the game.
    • The series in general has Dr. Eggman. While the Adventure / Heroes era and 4Kids! Entertainment voice actors were much criticized, Deem Bristow and Mike Pollock respectively stood out in doses of awesomely cheesy ham and memorable catchphrases. In fact, when the 4Kids voice actors were replaced, Mike Pollock retained his job.
      • Indeed, it has often been said about Robotnik that he has never had a bad voice actor. In the cartoon adaptations, Long John Baldry and Jim Cummings both play him ridiculously over-the-top (though in very different ways) and both give the most memorable performances in their respective shows.
  • Sir Michael Gambon (Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies) plays the ghost of 16th century knight Sir William Hawksmoor in Ghost Hunter, his only videogame appearance to date. Whether he's threatening the heroine, "I want FLESH", performing Shakespeare on a high-school stage (yes, seriously), giving orders to the ghost of a killer who died in the electric chair, pleading for his unlife with an unseen Parliament, or negotiating with modern day military, it's pure Ham and Cheese.
    • He's not the only one. Rob Paulsen, Joe Morton, André Sogliuzzo, Michael Cochrane, and Veronica Hart are all chewing the scenery at one time or another, including a ghostly high school librarian breaking into the school song.
  • In Resident Evil 5, it is quite clear that D. C. Douglas was having a hell of a time as Albert Wesker.

Wesker: Complete. Global. SATURATION.

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