Jonah Hill found to be most foul-mouthed actor of all time in count of silver screen expletives
Jonah Hill is the most foul-mouthed film actor of all time - thanks to his performance in Wolf on Wall Street, according to a new study of silver screen expletives.
Buzz Bingo, a UK-based betting site, watched 3,500 films to find the most sweary actor. Hill came out just ahead of Leonardo DiCaprio. Hill uttered 376 swear words throughout his career; while DiCaprio is currently on 361.
Other close contenders included Al Pacino, Adam Sandler and Samuel L. Jackson.
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street features the most swear words of any film, containing 715 expletives overall, with Uncut Gems, Casino, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Fury rounding out the top five.
Hill plays the role of Donnie Azoff, a character based on Daniel Mark Porush - an American businessman and former stockbroker who ran a so-called "pump and dump" stock fraud scheme in the 1990s.
According to the study, Hill uses a curse word in The Wolf of Wall Street 22.9 times every 1,000 words.
His performance in Superbad, the 2007 American coming-of-age teen comedy film, helped push him to the top spot.
"While there has been a general increase in the proportion of profanities used in films since the 1940s, swearing in cinema peaked in the 1990s with an average of three swear words per 1,000 words uttered, according to the scripts that we analysed," Buzz Bingo said.
The site said they found a pattern among PG-rated movies with a similar trend. Films in the 1990s averaged nearly 1.5 swears per 1,000 words.
Gary Oldman’s 1997 directorial debut Nil by Mouth receives the special honour of having the highest curse-to-dialogue ratio, with 41.3 out of every 1,000 words spoken in the film being swear words.
Hill celebrated his achievement on Instagram. “So many people to thank. @martinscorsese thanks for pushing me over the edge,” the actor joked. “And of course the great @samuelljackson. Humbled.”
