Okay, first off, I’m not talking about comedians or singers trying their hand at drama. I’m narrowing the scope of this discussion to established actors with whose works you are well acquainted…and who managed to blow your mind anyway.
An example from my recent Netflix queue:
I rented the 1953 version of Julius Ceasar out of pure curiosity, wondering if Marlon Brando’s turn as Antony would be worth a damn. Well, to be honest, Brando was pretty good. But I was totally floored by John Gielgud as Cassius. Okay, first of all, he had hair, which was unexpected. But the just-so-slightly crusty, eternally bemused, pink-cheeked, epitome of bone-dry upper class English drollery? As a villain? Well yes, yes, and a thousand times yes. My God, the man was intense…the hatred stabbed forth from his eyes, and his golden voice dripped with venom. While nothing, not even the ten minutes of Prospero’s Books I managed to sit through, could ever induce me to forget the man’s reputation as a Shakespearean interpreter of the highest order, somehow his subsequent fifty years of playing the butler had inured me to the power of his acting. I consider myself reenlightened.
Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison comes immediately to mind. At the time I’d seen him and loved him in Top Secret! and Real Genius…but I wasn’t expecting that performance.
Matthew Lillard in Scooby Doo- I’m not joking when I say that his take on Shaggy was incredible- perfect mannerisms, expressions, etc.- way better than lots of Oscar nominated performances
Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass- I only knew him from Star Wars; who knew he can actually act? (Lucas must be a director no one wants to work with except for money and exposure)
Ha! He’s actually the one I was gonna say. I didn’t think it was possible to have a live Shaggy. More than any character in Scooby Doo, he’s the one I think of as being the most cartoonish. I was so impressed with that performance. Actually, his performance is the only reason I even watched those abominations.
Watched Reese Witherspoon in Freeway about ten days ago. Never seen a movie with her in it,didn’t know a thing about her,but…HOLY CRAP!! She was amazing.Since then,I have seen three more of her movies,Fear,Legally Blonde and Walk The Line all outstanding performances. My new Favorite Actress.
Fergie (the pop-tard) had a small part in “Planet Terror” (the good half of “Grindhouse”) and was pretty decent in it.
Mike Myers in “Studio 54”. His scenes made the movie watchable.
The dude who played the Human Torch/Johnny Storm in “Fantastic Four” I liked him in “Not Another Teen Movie” and I wasn’t expecting to like him so much in the FF movie. He was easily the best part of it.
I loved Laurence Olivier, and I always expected excellence from him (and got it). The movie in which his performance knocked my socks off was The Entertainer, in which he played a loud, not-very-talented, washed-up vaudeville performer. Olivier as Hamlet, Lear (even Othello)? Sure, that’s what he was born for. Olivier portraying a third-rate hack? Now, that was acting.
Ryan Reynolds was surprisingly great as a competent, serious, heroic FBI agent in Smokin’ Aces. (R&B singer Alicia Keyes was very good in that movie as well, playing a super-sexy hitwoman.)
I’m not a Hugh Grant fan, but I thought he was spot-on perfect as a has-been '80s pop star in Music and Lyrics, a romantic comedy I liked a lot, in spite of myself. He was actually charming without being obnoxious, when he could have played the character as very stuck-up, bitter, or deluded.
Probably the biggest of all time for me: I always thought of Brad Pitt as a pretty-boy, an “actor” who was only in movies because he made girls swoon. I always think of that one period piece where he had long blond hair and rode horses a lot. I was stunned when I saw him in two good roles back-to-back: a crazy wannabe-revolutionary in *12 Monkeys * and a big-city detective in Seven. Now I think he’s a terrific character actor trapped in a leading man’s body, with Tyler Durden in Fight Club as his greatest role ever.
I was very impressed with Colin Farrell in Phone Booth. Before that I had only seen him play the cocky tough guy. I thought is performance in Phone Booth validated his acting skills.
That was going to be mine. An astounding performance, all the more so because it really isn’t that far from Happy Gilmore. It’s basically exactly the same character, except when placed in a realistic setting surrounded by normal people, it highlights how pathetic and dysfunctional such a person would really be.