Paul Giamatti, Paul Reubens, and Ricky Gervais as cold-blooded mob enforcers.
Daniel Radcliffe as the Joker in the next Batman movie.
Casting against type has always been a kind of Hollywood in joke; it’s nothing new. (Imagine how unfunny *Meet the Fockers *would’ve been without Streisand and Hoffman.)
Case in point, about 67% of your suggestions have already come to pass, more or less. See Shoot Em Up for Giamatti as a psycho crime boss; see Buffy the Vampire slayer for Paul Reubens as a vampire whose characterization owes a debt to movie-hitman cliches.
My nomination for greatest against-type performance of all time? Rod Steiger as Mr. Joyboy in The Loved Ones.
Worst: DeNiro’s career-ending performance in Stardust.
Most anticipated I haven’t seen yet: Robin Williams in World’s Greatest Dad.
Sandra Bullock doing anything other than a goddam quirky romantic comedy. She’s 45 years old and still playing these dingbat roles.
Lord, yes, especially when he sang “Mama’s little boy loves shortenin’ bread” to his morbidly obese mother. Kind of disturbing, actually.
Cecily Tyson as a miltant black panther.
Imagine how unfunny it was anyway.
I loved his performance in Stardust and I highly doubt it ended his career. A quick glance at IMDB confirms that.
I’m not entirely sure how I made this connection, but I was watching the trailer for Cirque du Freak, and I suddenly thought, “I’d love to see a remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with John C. Reilly in the leading role.”
Ha!
I thought she was pretty awesome in Demolition Man. Everything else after that, though? Eh… not so much.
Dakota Fanning as Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction.
Or as somebody who is not and has never been a slave or a maid for white people and never once has to say “Yas’m”. (She’s the incarnation of the “too few parts for talented black actresses” rule; she’s wasted in most roles.)
No. Harvey Fierstein IS Chuck Norris
Best example of already come to pass: Elijah Wood as Kevin in Sin City. Scared the crap out of me.
Tommy Lee Jones as a militant Black Panther.
The funny part is, I’m sure he could pull it off. Put a blond wig on him and contacts, and have him play a black man with albinism.
I hope they all don’t have to be still living!
How about…
Mickey Rooney (or Buddy Hackett or Bela Lugosi) As Jesus Christ.
Billy Barty as Abraham Lincoln.
Roseanne Barr as Joan of Arc.
Amy Winehouse as Hannah Montana
Jim Nabors as Rock Hudson
(an inside joke!!)
Don Knotts as Dirty Harry
John Wayne as Winston Churchill
Notorious B.I.G. as Othello
The Monkees as the Beatles
Margaret Cho as Madame Butterfly
And, as “The Magnificent Seven”:…
Paul Reubens
Arnold Schwarzenneger
Ben Stein
Harvey Fierstein
Vincent Price
Tim Conway
Mel Brooks
The late Katharine Hepburn (in her prime) as an illiterate welfare mother coping with meth addiction.
Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Fiennes in a remake of Sanford and Son.
Keanu Reeves as Stephen Hawking.
What about Steptoe and Son? Or did you want them to go for blackface? 