Who has the highest "Cuba number?"

[econophile]

As I sat in the movie theater the other day and saw a trailer for Daddy Day Camp I thought, "Great! Another horrible project choice by Cuba Gooding Jr." As far as I could recall, his career consisted of one great performance (in Jerry McGuire) followed by a string of idiotic paydays (e.g. Chill Factor, Snow Dogs, Rat Race).

I then wondered if, compared to Cuba Gooding Jr., there were any other actors who had a better but a lower quality of their average body of work and how I might quantify the concept. Here's my idea: Take an actor and rank each of his performances on a scale from one to ten. Take the highest score of all the performances and subtract the overall average. For example, if we rank Cuba's performances as 9, 2, 3, 2 and 2, then his score is 9 - (9 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2)/5 = 5.4. The highest possible score would be 10, which would mean an actor had one perfect performance and an infinite number of absolutely awful performances. I call this number the Cuba number.

My metric may not be perfect, but I think it captures the idea. Still, I'm welcome to suggestions for improvements. Another problem is deciding how to rank an actors performance. One crude way to do this would be to use the IMDB rating for each movie an actor is in, but a movie's quality often has little to do with a particular actor's performance.

A benefit of my metric is that it can be applied not only to actors, but to music groups, TV shows, etc. So, who has a high Cuba number than Cuba?

[Boris]

Dude. Rat Race is a great flick.

[pergesu]

I thought he was great in Men of Honor.

[KotOD]

Marisa Tomei

[edfurlong]

I didn't read any of that, but I vote Ed Furlong.

[econophile]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought he was great in Men of Honor.

[/ QUOTE ]

I should point out that Cuba's actual number may not be one of the highest, especially since I haven't seen several of his movies. But instead of talking about Cuba's career, I'd rather hear suggestions of actors with higher Cuba numbers.

[econophile]

BTW, I nominate FrogPond for OOT poster with the highest Cuba number.

[KotOD]

Kevin Costner
Mel Gibson

[NT!]

john goodman might be a good nominee. he was basically only good in a few coen bros movies and awful in everything else.

[econophile]

[ QUOTE ]
Kevin Costner
Mel Gibson

[/ QUOTE ]

When you post ppl, you should name their one good performance and give some examples of their bad stuff.

Are you thinking "Field of Dreams" for Costner (or maybe "Dances with Wolves") and "Braveheart" for Gibson?