Who knew she was a boxer?
This gave me a good Friday laugh 
Every time I see this thread, I misread the first word as “Canadians.”
Justin Trudeau’s performance as Othello was riveting.
Me too!
One of my favs.
I thought Carell was brilliant in The Morning Show as well.
You can’t mention Art Carney as a dramatic actor without pointing out that he beat out the likes of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Albert Finney for the 1974 Best Actor Oscar award. With the exception of Finney, those other guys got better at acting and won Oscars of their own later on in their careers.
I don’t know if a single episode is sufficient to make a judgment, but I was surprised by Lee Mack’s performance in the Doctor Who episode “Kerblam” - he was friendly but restrained, and slightly sad; pretty much the diametric opposite to his comic persona.
If you’re going to throw in Hugh Laurie, you should also add his girlfriend and stalwart comic in the same sketch comedies:
Emma Thompson
I just watched some clips on YouTube that reminded me how good a nonfunny Chris Pratt was in Moneyball.
It’s been stated, but Robin Williams did beautifully as the shy doctor in Awakenings. His care for the Robert De Niro character, and his burgeoning affection of the nurse (played by Julie Kavner) showed that he had dramatic acting chops.
Where he lost it, according to me, was the films where he started the movie as a crazy comedy, then the movie turned into a serious drama: Patch Adams, Good Morning Vietnam, and the like.
Of course, he continued to do crazy comedies, but they were comedies. The half-drama, half-comedy stuff never worked. Williams could do drama, and he could do comedy, but he should never have mixed them.
Doug Stanhope exhibited pretty good dramatic acting skills as a suicidal comedian on “Louie”.
Louie CK didn’t do too bad himself.
So very true!
Nor was he afraid to poke fun at the limits of his dramatic acting talent:
Some of the roles Goodman played in various Coen brother movies are downright terrifying. He can be a seriously scary mf when he puts his mind to it.
I recently saw Sean Hayes, who played Jack on Will & Grace, on stage in Good Night, Oscar. He showed some serious dramatic acting skills in that production.
He’s a hell of a singer too, as evidenced by his work on Nashville.
Yeah, at one point I considered starting a thread about actors who can play ‘nice guys’ or ‘evil, scary or hateful bastards’ equally well. Goodman was one I would have used for a prime example, as well as J.K. Simmons. John Carroll Lynch is another-- he played kind of a goofy character on The Drew Carey Show, but he was also the scary clown on the ‘American Horror Story: Freak Show’ season, and he did a very good job playing a quietly malevolent character in the movie "The Invitation’.
Adam Sandler trained at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts the same time as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathleen Erbe (L&O), and Mrs. Cheesesteak.