who is a better actor?

arnold schwarzenegger or robert de niro?

most people might say robert de niro.

but why?

on a meta level they are same.

both make funny faces and are good with only certain types of characters.

arnold was in more mass movies from the start, while de niro started accepting those movies only lately.

for me arnold works better.

i can not imagine anyone else as conan or the terminator,

but i can imagine plenty actors as rodrigo mendoza or rupert pupkin.

is arnold one of the most underestimated actors?

is robert de niro one of the most overestimated actors?

what is so relevant that robert de niro contributed to the experience of films that he is so relevant?

and what is it that arnold schwarzenegger does so badly that we underestimate him?

arnold performed perfectly in movies like terminator, predator, total recall…

de niro struggles to belong in movies like fockers, the mission…

arnold worked with geniuses like dino de laurentis and paul verhoeven.

de niro worked with other super overrated directors like scorsese and coppola

who also struggle to maintain the image they developed several decades ago with cheaper movies.

like a club who did something cool four decades ago and since then they have been struggling to find a new place.

while arnold is always same.

there is an army of artsy actors who started doing action films in late 40s and 50s.

arnold did not need half of his life to figure this out and immediately did action and cheesy comedy.

de niro was pretending to be an artist in hollywood only to come to terms with reality in movies like fockers

where again he is super weird (face cramps!).

funny that ‘arnold schwarzenegger robert de niro” google image search gave me no photos of them together.

what is acting anyway?

acting is a very general word.

is it ability to entertain, teach, inspire, or is it art which again means everything and nothing.

in hollywood context it is about entertaining and arnold always performed so well.

if you want to be a teacher go to university, if you want to be an artist go to russian tundra.