Sleepwalking, Phoning It In, Going Through The Motions, etc.

9 out of 10 movies that Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins and Nicholas Cage have done in the last 15 or so years have been phoned in. And all of them have won Oscars for a lead role. wtf?

One actor who has NEVER phoned it in... Meryl Streep.

DeNiro, Walken, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, and to a lesser extent, Al Pacino, have been phoning it in for a long time.

I’ll echo the Daniel Craig in Spectre sentiment above

And there's someone who goes back and forth. Clearly he takes roles that are just for the money, or "easy" for an actor of his caliber. But then he goes and does things like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and wins an Oscar, rightfully so, for Darkest Hour. IMO he's brilliant and an over-actor both at the same time, LOL!

I think former big name actors are 'phoning it in' mainly because they are just taking any random movies for the $ and not because the movie itself might actually end up being good and when a movie itself comes across as pretty generic, it's going to appear they are phoning it in that much more.

but if they gave basically the same performance in a decent/good movie then it won't look as bad. so I think, at least for the most part, it boils down to the quality of the movie they are in. because even if a major name actor is in a so-so at best level of movie they can't save it. but if you get a decent or good director they can easily make a actor shine (or look good enough) and in turn the actor makes the movie shine a bit brighter to.

but like others have said it seems Nicolas Cage/Bruce Willis etc have been 'phoning it in' for quite some time now as they seem to take just about any role for the $ where as years ago they had more of a decent standard in which movies they choose to do.

That is very correct.