Which Actor Swears the Most On Screen? – Armessa Movie News

While it may not have been what its pioneers intended, the medium of film has provided a great platform for the art of cursing. For young film viewers coming of age, the taboo phenomenon of using forbidden words is often first introduced on the big screen. In some cases, vulgarity acts as an exhilarating process in the same vicinity as a great action set piece. Swearing has become such a reliable device that a handful of prominent actors in Hollywood are defined by the act, placing it firmly in their repertoire. The actor with the most use of curse words on screen in history is not who you’d expect, though. Forget Samuel L. Jackson, Al Pacino, or Joe Pesci, Jonah Hill is the one who holds the profanity crown.

Jonah Hill Stars in Some of the Most Profane Films of all Time

Until the 1970s, audiences would be hard-pressed to come across a film with any profane language. As a factory of escapist fantasies, classic Hollywood generally presented itself with an artificial worldview. With the implementation of the Hays Code in the 1930s, profanity especially became a forbidden act. Once New Hollywood mavericks such as Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, and William Friedkin came along and challenged the status quo, suddenly films developed a candid vocabulary. If a respective demographic depicted in the film is one likely to swear, then they will proceed to deploy their natural language. Nowadays, R-rated, and even PG-13-rated pictures, are understood to feature NSFW dialogue.

When thinking of films, notably within the last two decades, that are the most profane, there is an existing commonality. A lot of notable entries, including The Wolf of Wall Street, Superbad, Funny People, This is the End, War Dogs, and Sausage Party, star Jonah Hill. All of these films are quick to deploy the most iconic swear, “fuck,” but Wolf of Wall Street takes the cake with over 500 uses of the word. Hill is not a bystander during this onslaught of profanities being used on screen. In fact, he is perhaps the greatest contributor to these films’ R-rating and reputation as the dirtiest movies of their time. A 2020 Buzz Bingo survey concluded that Hill holds the record with 376 profanities used across his vast filmography. The study reports that Hill utters a curse word in Wolf of Wall Street 22.9 times every 1,000 words. Stunned in disbelief that he did not hold the record, Samuel L. Jackson responded, “That’s some bullshit!” when informed of the study on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Hill’s Wall Street co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio, was second on this list.

Hill’s Partnership with Judd Apatow Allows For Raunchier Roles

Hill emerged in the public eye as a regular player in the Judd Apatow farm system during the studio comedy boom of the 2000s. He starred in the director’s first three feature films, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Funny People, with a more prominent role in each successive film. With his breakout leading role in the forever indelible Superbad, which Apatow produced, Hill vaulted to comedy super-stardom. By the early 2010s, he cashed in on his popularity by announcing himself as a credible dramatic actor. Stellar supporting turns in auteur-driven Oscar contenders like Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street garnered him Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor, sharing the screen alongside perhaps the two biggest stars in Hollywood, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The style of filmmaking comprised during Jonah Hill’s golden age as a star is a major factor in his title as the most profane on-screen performer. By nature of starring in comedies, Hill being a prevalent swearer is largely unavoidable. The Apatow-adjacent comedies that Hill frequently starred in were all R-rated for their vulgarity and crude sexual content. His comedy universe prides itself on depicting honest conversations between often immature people who are nonetheless granted a sympathetic understanding. With his background as a stand-up comic, Apatow’s directing style is famously reliant on improvisation and allowing his actors to extensively riff with each other through off-the-cuff jokes. When a heavily improvised scene takes place, it is palpable to the viewer. The sensation of watching the witty minds of Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Leslie Mann experiment with their comedic timing and delivery is fascinating — in addition to its inherent humor.

The process of improvisation invites the persistent use of cursing in films, especially of the comedic variety. For some performers, swearing is a crutch. Comics are privy to using curse words as a guarantee for a cheap joke or an easy solution to spice up a flat joke. On a more practical matter, cursing can be used as a means to fill in space or stall for time as the actor crafts their improvisations. The art of improvisation in film naturally inflates the number of curse words. The plethora of memorable riffing sequences between characters in Superbad and Knocked Up, which often relate to insulting each other’s appearance, are never clean and wholesome.

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The Impact of Hill’s Cursing in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Besides his gaudy statistics, what makes Jonah Hill such a prolific on-screen swearer is the impact of his vulgar language on his films. When Hill curses, even at an abundant rate, it hardly feels gratuitous. His characters’ basis for cursing profusely is indebted to the background and attitude of the film. In the Apatow universe, Hill expertly plays young men riddled with a juvenile streak while attempting to seem more adult, and they use swearing as a vehicle to express their aggression.

Never has the actor’s impeccable craft of swearing been realized quite as well before or since The Wolf of Wall Street. Martin Scorsese‘s tale of excess, debauchery, and the rotten core of capitalism would be incomplete without the influx of extreme profanity. The amount of curses across its 3-hour runtime is in service of the life of greed and indulgence that Jordan Belfort embodies. Furthermore, Hill should have felt right at home while filming The Wolf of Wall Street, as many of the most iconic scenes, including the “sell me this pen,” and Matthew McConaughey chest-thumping sequences, were improvised. The three main players during production, Scorsese, DiCaprio, and Hill, all took comfort in improvisation, and subsequently rehearsed these moments of freestyle and added them into the script.

It is difficult to imagine hearing Hill’s voice without expecting a dirty word coming out of his mouth. His stardom and public persona are associated with his vulgar vocabulary, and this is primarily a credit to his convincing delivery of these swear words. Safe to say, when a film featuring Jonah Hill is playing in the house while kids are around, it would be appropriate to grab the earmuffs.