In This thread, it was mentioned that George Carlin (AKA “He of the Seven Dirty Words” hosted the kid’s TV show Shining Time Station for a while, apparantly because it was fun for him to play a character very much not of the type he tends to play.
Something that sticks in my head as being a similar situation are the Mariachi Trilogy and the Spy Kids series. The first set of movies are a very grown-up kind of action movie, with excessive violence, sex scenes, profanity, etc., and the second set is a series of kid’s movies about a brother and sister who go about saving the world when their parents (both master spies) are taken prisoner by the bad guy.
What makes this amusing is that both sets of movies are directed by the same guy, and feature most of the same cast, in many cases playing VERY different kinds of roles.
What are some other examples of actors (or even directors/producers) doing stuff that’s way out of character for them?
Well, back in 1993, a lot of people wondered what Speilberg was thinking when he announced he was making a serious film in black & white about the Holocaust.
Barry Levinson, the writer/director behind such fairly realistic and dialogue-driven comedy/dramas like Diner, Tin Men, and** Rainman**, unsuccessfully tried to do Tim Burtonesque surrealistic fantasy with Toys and James Cameronesque sci-fi/action with Sphere.
Mike Nichols has a fairly notable–if inconsistent–career in movies. However, he would be the second-to-last notable director I would pick to helm a serious horror movie (the last being Woody Allen). Yet, somehow, he ended up directing **Wolf ** with Jack Nicholson as a balding and paunchy middle-aged werewolf. The results were as ridiculous as you would expect.
Well, Wolf was actually pretty good. But going in the opposite direction, Wes Craven directed Music of the Heart, a fairly good “inspiring teacher” drama with Meryl Streep starring.
I remember there was a mild furor of concern back when Peter Jackson took on the Lord of the Rings, saying that he hadn’t done that much “classic fantasy”, or whatever you want to call LOTR, and that he hadn’t done anything on that scale.
Seems to have worked out pretty well, in any case.
One of the stranger roles I’ve seen was in Capricorn I. No, I’m not talking about the serious astro-nots played by OJ Simpson and Elliot Gould. I’m talking about the wise-cracking jokester played by Sam Waterston.