"Sophie Devereaux is the finest actress you've ever seen, when she's breaking the law."
—Nathan Ford, "The Nigerian Job", Leverage
Normally, being a good liar and being a good actor would go hand in hand. After all, acting is basically "lying" about being someone else. However, some characters manage to be very effective liars and con artists despite being atrocious actors.
The reasons for this may vary. Perhaps the character has a sort of performance anxiety that makes professional acting difficult but may be more comfortable committing more intimate deception. They could also prefer scamming or lying to people over being a good actor. They could also be a bad actor on purpose since a talented actor could gain fame and recognition that could draw unwanted attention to a grifter. If their lives or the lives of others depend on the character's deception being successful, that could be a good motivator as well. In some cases, the deception and conning could result in their character acting skills improving.
If a character is known In-Universe for being a terrible actor, they can take advantage of their reputation since no one would expect them to be good at lying. However, this advantage might wane if they become more renowned for lying.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Lupin III: Lupin posits this at the end of an episode where Fujiko tries to trick him into helping her and a friend steal some valuable Japanese portraits and replace them with forged copies. The "friend" is actually an actor playing a descendant of the man who painted the pictures, but Lupin picks up on it fairly quickly and turns the tables on them both.
Lupin (dressed in theater paint): A con man is a better actor than an actor is a con man.
Comic Books
- Franka: The fifth issue of this Duch comic-book introduces John Something Smith, a 1930s con man who is very good at impersonating people but suffers from crippling stage fright as an actor. Smith and the titular hero team up to keep a pupil of his from using the skills in impersonation taught to him by Smith to commit a bank robbery.
Fan Works
- As Fate Would Have It: Inverted Trope with both Nate and Yancy. Both are established in the story to be a great actor and TV host/Idol Singer respectively, which requires them to act differently in front of a screen. Off-camera, they're both shown to be Bad Liars, with their attempts at hiding their intentions or embarrassing actions failing miserably, as their parents and friends are able to immediately figure out what they're hiding from them.
Films — Live-Action
- To Be or Not to Be: Josef Tura (known as Frederick Bronski in the 1983 remake) is described as a rather poor actor, despite claiming to be the best actor in Poland. When a mole infiltrates the Polish resistance, Tura/Bronski disguises himself as the traitor to give a fake report to the local Gestapo leadership. After convincing them that leadership of the resistance have been captured and executed, he asks the leader of the Gestapo if he's heard of the greatest actor in Poland, Josef Tura/Frederick Bronski, and the response he gets is "what he did to Shakespeare, we are doing to Poland." After leaving Gestapo H.Q., Tura/Bronski laments that no one saw the greatest performance he ever gave.
Literature
- How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It: Notker is a mediocre actor and playwright who is fairly good at doing impressions, but ends up doing a very effective (too effective) job when he's commandeered into doing an Emergency Impersonation of slain war hero Lysimachus. Essentially, Notker is kind of a non-entity as a person, and thus a less than great actor, because he put a lot of effort into escaping his past as the son of a gangster. However, since Lysimachus is what Notker's father (or himself) would be like if he found a cause he believed in, while still being a cheerful murderer, Notker can effectively "become" Lysimachus, since he knows exactly how he thinks (thought).
Live-Action TV
- Angel: "Eternity" opens with Angel and Wesley being forced to sit through Cordelia's horrible performance in A Doll's House. In the episode's climax, she is able to distract Angelus by tricking him into thinking she has a bottle of holy water. In a later episode, she successfully impersonates a cop.
- Leverage: Sophie Devereaux is the team's grifter and is able to assume fake identities as easily as a chameleon changes color. Despite this, her theatrical acting is so atrocious that Eliot finds it worse than the time he was forced to play Russian Roulette. In one episode, a critic says her production of The Sound of Music was so terrible it made them root for the Nazis. However, Sophie can act well when a con requires her to play the role of a talented actress.
Nate: She can act. When it's an act.
- Roswell: Max is an alien/human hybrid who is able to pass as a regular, if somewhat shy human. In "Secrets and Lies", he auditions for a small role on Star Trek: Enterprise and is told by Jonathan Frakes and John Billingsley that he isn't convincing as an alien.
Video Games
- Persona 5: Inverted. Akechi is a skilled actor, appearing kind and charming as the Detective Prince on TV, a role which has earned him a devoted fan base. However, he speaks awkwardly when he directly lies about being surprised at Morgana talking while pretending to have only newly acquired a Persona. Unsurprisingly, the Phantom Thieves do not believe him, though partly because Akechi accidentally acknowledged Morgana's voice several months before.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: Roger is a Manipulative Bastard who can easily deceive others with long-winded scams. Yet whenever he auditions for a professional acting role, he is absolutely terrible at it.
