Yes, thats my take too, big difference between "worst actor" and "worst performance" imho. Someone like Eccleston or Briers doesn't belong on any worst actor list ever tbh.....

Just my opinion. I've probably blocked the rest

Yes, that's a fair enough point (I did qualify it, in some of my choices by saying it wasn't the quality of the actor as such and more the fit for the role. In my opinion).

I do think these things are totally subjective though. In my case, rather than "worst actors", perhaps my answer reflected more "actors who made you cringe in DW for whatever reason".

As I said, I've probably blocked the worst offenders over the years...

ooh, Leslie Grantham was pretty awful too

just to clarify: i was speaking in general not specifically about you

and yes there is a degree of subjectivity, but the two names I mentioned are probably two of the most respected british actors of their respective generations, so present as odd choices to put on a "worst actor" list.

Mickey was terrible... But he did gradually improve.

I'll be booted off the boards for these next ones, but I didn't find Sarah Jane particularly convincing,
and
any scene where Tennant had to be angry. He was like a wee boy shouting at a bully.

My pleasant suprises were Billy Piper and Catherine Tate, both were far better than I ever expected.

I'm sorry, not for the first time today I am quite confused. I thought that for the purposes of this thread we were judging the actors solely on their performances in Doctor Who, not their life's work?

the OP doesn't suggest anything more than "Which Who actors and actresses are the worst in your opinion?" so it's really not defined as such....

Some Doctor Who producers / directors have been better than others at controlling the actors and insisting they play straight and take their part seriously. That is why there seems to be a greater preponderance of bad performances in the 80s under JNT than say, the seventies under Barry Letts and Phillip Hinchcliffe, who were both strict about the show being taken seriously. Once Hinchcliffe leaves you start to see more frivolous and badly judged performances creeping in; it didn't help that actors took their license to send the characters up from the humour infused into the scripts by Douglas Adams and the quirky moments supplied by Tom Baker, missing the point that:

Douglas Adams scripts were witty and amusing and they were not.

Tom Baker had given himself license to play the part that way by establishing the character so well - whereas the guest actors were better advised to play straight.

I will never do anything other than despise Bruce Purchase's performance as the Pirate Captain in 'The Pirate Planet'.
***

In the early days of the show a lot of the actors would be theatre actors relatively or entirely new to TV. One good example of this, discussed in the DVD commentary for the serial, is the character of 'Yartek' in 'The Keys of Marinus', who had apparently been unreliably informed prior to shooting this first TV work to never blink whilst on camera, making his character's intense stare very disconcerting. The actor, Stephen Dartnell, would reappear in 'the Sensorites' as 'John', doing slightly better.

On top of that the show was more or less recorded 'as live', with only the occasional retake and stop & edit to insert special effects sequencies. In that format fluffs and slips were inevitable, especially in the inadequate studios the show was filmed in.

Anything other than a forgiving attitude towards some of the performances, in the circumstances, would be churlish. It would be interesting to see how the actors of today would fare in the same conditions. I honestly doubt they would be any better. In fact, I'd love to see the modern Doctors remember all of their bafflegab and never fluff it working under the same conditions as Hartnell did, and with arteriosclerosis no less, as someone already pointed out.

Two from Delta and The Bannermen

Belinda Mayne (Delta) and David Kinder (Billy)

As for that story I thought Ken Dodd wasn't too bad. The way I see it his character was meant to be portrayed in a humourous way.

you make a very good point here about the earlier days of the show, when you consider the way it was filmed back then, you have to make allowances. I imagine even Daniel Day Lewis has done the odd bad take in his life

Yes indeed. When you watch the behind the scenes or off camera footage of the show being filmed it was done in such a way it was a miracle they often performed as wonderfully as they did.

And it goes for the production side of the show as well. Sometimes the criticism of the show's perceived low production values is valid (the ill-advised dinosaurs in 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs' for example) but in general, given the limitations and obstacles they had to work around amazing work was done on the show, especially in the 60s. People either forget, or are ignorant of the fact, that the show was being filmed in a tiny room, with a number of huge, relatively immobile cameras, with no edits, little money for sets, props and costumes (which required amazing innovation and creativity) and under intensive time constraints (they more or less filmed an episode in a day in the really early serials).

I'm always amazed to see the incredible work done by all who worked on them.

Absolutely. It is all too easily forgotten these days just how amazing the work they did was. And not to devalue the artistic brilliance of the modern era which I think is among the best on television but it is just not comparable. It took alot more to get what they did back then than it does now. This is just a fact if the technology moving forward at such a pace in the last couple of decades. But it never stops the tired old jokes and criticism of Old Who for its production values any less annoying. There was real artistic brilliance and true craft back then which was all the more incredible for the times it was made. And its easy to laugh at some of the more dubious missteps with the smug hindsight of history but even they were to be applauded because they often pushed way beyond what was possible and yes, it often didn't work. But goodness knows they strived to do the very best and often created enduring effects and worlds that still endure to this day. And they didn't just sit behind an Apple Mac to do it *

Edit. Sorry. A glib remark. I know there is more to it than that but get my point.

As someone who grew up on Who and Harryhausen and Trumbull one of the most depressing experiences of my student life was sitting in a lecture where a bunch of Michael Bay watching upstarts were outraged at the 'poor' special effects in Blade Runner. Some people eh?

Lachlan Nieboer, who played Gray in Torchwood.

In my opinion his portrayal as Gray is something bad.

The thing I hated most about it was that while Gray wasn't a terrible character, he wasn't a good one either. he was worst than being a bad character.

He was boring.

People complain about numerous characters for whatever reason, but those flaws are what make those characters stand out, something that makes them noteworthy.

At no point did Gray do anything that made me have an actual opinion of him. This was supposed to be an important character who was meant to have a massive impact on Jack, but I found him dull. If he was a minor character, this would be understandable, but he was a major villain.

Everything else about "Exit Wounds" was interesting: the bombings of Cardiff, the actions of John Hart, the deaths of Owen and Tosh, and even Jack's reactions to his brother. Gray on the other hand was, in my opinion, as gray as his name.

I'd rather had a badly written character than a bland one.

I thought he was pretty good in the Eccleston stories, plus in Utopia.

But I think his best work with DW was in TW Children of Earth

I am sure Barrowman himself would make no claims to be a De Niro or an Olivier but then his acting background was the total opposite.

I always thought him and Jack were one of those great moments when you get perfect synthesis of actor and character. He was always destined to be Jack. And he was always brilliant in Doctor Who especially in Utopia as you mention.

And blimey. Look at Children of Earth! He totally stormed that and carried every big moment perfectly which cannot have been easy as it was a definite shift from Old Jack and took the character to places he hadn't been before. I think he was particularly amazing in that.

oh and I've just remembered all those awful 'American' accents in the Manhattan Daleks episode. Shudder.

Oh... I just remembered the lighthouse keepers in 'Horror of Fang Rock'...

Reading Barrowman's autobiography he said he initially had a conflict with the director about the way Euros Lyn wanted the character to be portrayed/acted,

In one scene Euros asked him for another take "this time bring it back a bit"

JB replied "If I bring it back any further . I'll be back in the f****** trailer!"

But he said they eventually ended up having a good working relationship

Worst American accent ever belongs to Sean Bean in Silent hill. Dick Van Dyke bad.
I'll agree Ecclestone felt forced in the role but worst performance goes to John Simms. Not that I'd blame him, he's acted the part how he's been told

I thought she was amazing as Rose. One of the best actresses in Doctor Who so far.

Certainly better at acting than singing.

That should have so been shown in Doctor Who Confidential.

The young one and the old one weren't too bad

Whoever played the 'android' in tonight's episode was embarrassingly awful.

The guy who played the first brother to die deserves a mention as well. And Ashley Walters...

Jesus everyone in that episode who's name wasn't Matt Smith or Jenna Louise Coleman deserves to be in this thread!