Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt.
Reign Over Me was another dramatic role (and I much preferred it to Uncut Gems).
The Adam Sandler movie I was going to mention was Spanglish. After seeing Terry O’Qinn play lawmen and doctors, I was surprised by The Stepfather.
ETA: Sandler is surprisingly good in dramatic roles. He should do more. I heard that he says it’s ‘work’ unlike his dial-it-n comedies.
Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West.
From the Great Actors never in Great Films thread: James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Gandhi. Not Ghandi.
I opened this thread to name Bogart for The Caine Mutiny: figure that he’d paid his supporting-actor dues as a sneering tough-guy gangster heavy, and that he earned his leading-man Oscar nomination as iconic antihero Rick Blaine in between perfecting the private-eye role as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe; and that, after heading up one war movie after another as the confident military officer who knows what he’s doing, he wasn’t really anybody’s go-to choice to earn another Oscar nomination being flustered and overwhelmed as a weak-willed stammerer who’s in over his head.
Great example.
Don Draper? The Mad Man?
ETA: Logan, Don Logan
Airplane! was a comedy, but with the exception of Stephen Stucker everybody played it straight. It needed actors like Nielsen and Bridges who could be absolutely serious to make it as funny as it was. It was brilliant casting, and obviously all the serious actors were in on the joke, but they weren’t exactly playing against type.
In the same vein, Tommy Lee Jones was hysterical in Men in Black. When he’s interrogating a dog and treating it like the most normal thing in the world, it’s brilliant.
Also George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove. That’s another comedy that’s played mostly straight, but Scott has the gung ho turned up to 11 and he’s excellent. I read somewhere that he was unhappy about it, though. Stanley Kubrick wanted the character to be over-the-top, and was having trouble getting the performance he wanted. He asked Scott to do a few takes as broadly as possible, with the promise that he wouldn’t use them, and then put them in the film anyway. I don’t know if Scott got over his objection; the finished film is clearly a masterpiece.
Hmm, maybe every deadpan comedy needs one silly character just for the contrast; someone the other characters should laugh at, but don’t.
Betty White in Lake Placid. Foul mouthed crocodile lover.
Betty White in Lake Placid. Foul mouthed crocodile lover.
‘If I had a dick, this is where I’d tell you to suck it.’ Fuckin’ awesome.
I thought so too. I hope he does more. It was as surprising as Ray Romano’s mob lawyer role in The Irishman. Ray Romano as mob lawyer sounds like an SNL sketch but it worked.
Now that I think of it, while Uncut Gems is a serious movie and it’s a serious role, he plays an irresponsible jackass which I think is not quite the first time in his career.
Malcolm McDowell in Time After Time. Not very rapey or murdery at all.
When you’re in a movie with David Warner, you don’t get to play the villain.
Or Charlize Theron as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos? However, she won an Oscar for it, and deserved it.
Isn’t Woody Harrelson the trope namer for this? He plays a lovable goofball on Cheers and then his next big role is as a psychotic murderer in Natural Born Killers.
I also recall Elisabeth Shue having never played a role like her character in Leaving Las Vegas.
John Goodman’s dramatic role in Kevin Smith’s Red State was great.
Steve Coogan is well known as a comedic actor and writer. Especially as his character Alan Partridge.
But he’s done some serious stuff, most notably Philomena which he he co-wrote, produced, and starred in. It won Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
Similarly, Will Forte was generally known only for comedy before he did Nebraska. (A movie that got six Oscar nods.) I’d give the edge to Coogan over Forte here.
You think Meryl Streep has a type to play against?!?