David Schwimmer as a Naval officer in Flight of the Intruder. He only has one scene, and he prety much acts exactly as he later would on Friends (maybe a bit less so in the movie), but it sure as hell suprised me to realize who he was. That said, pretty much anything he did in that scene was overshadowed by Wilem Dafoe’s usual Wilem Dafoe-ness in the same scene.
Do cartoons count? I was highly suprised to see that Denis Leary played one of the central characters in the Ice Age movies, since he tends to not be the sort to show up in kids movies (although his role in the movie was essentially a G-rated Denis Leary, so it worked quite well)
Yet another for Michael Keaton’s Batman- a friend who is a big Batman fan actually lost sleep when the announcement was made. He would also be posting here if he were on the Dope.
Right on with Kevin Bacon. Until I saw him in JFK, I never thought too highly of him. But wow, when he said, “You don’t know shit 'cause you’ve never been fucked in the ass!”, I knew we we’re dealing with an actor.
Jamie Foxx. I had only known him as the obnoxious character he played on his own sitcom and the similarly obnoxious quarterback in Any Given Sunday . With that as a background I was astounded by how well he protrayed Ray Charles in Ray and how well he played the hapless cabbie in Collateral. He certainly deserved the Oscar for Ray
I’d only known Heath Ledger from A Knight’s Tale and 10 Things I Hate About You–maybe Lords of Dogtown. I saw the listings for Brokeback Mountain and thought, “Okay, he’s good-looking and all, but come on, him?”
Still one of the best performances that never won an Oscar, IMHO.
Check him out in The Woodsman. He’s awesome. As he was in Stir of Echoes and especially the one where he was in solitary confinement for a long time. What was the name of that. Academy Award performance.
Robin Williams as Garp. Up till then, he’d been known as a comedian.
The movie also featured break out roles for Glenn Close as Jenny Fields, and John Lithgow was Roberta Muldoon (a role orginally offered to Christopher Reeve!)
**George C. Scott ** in Dr. Strangelove, perhaps? I’m not sure if this is quite what the OP is looking for, but I thought **Burt Lancaster ** and Tony Curtis were both tremendous in *The Sweet Smell of Success * and proved the old axiom that actors get better at their craft when they play unsympathetic characters.
Yes, but I hdan’t seen Kalifornia or Se7en, and didn’t remember him from True Romance. Come to think of it, he wan’t really that good in Se7en either. So, it wasn’t just the chick flick thing, it was the chick flick/didn’t seem like a good actor thing.
I second Tom Cruise in Interview With the Vampire . When I first heard he was playing Lestat, every horror-loving cell in my body cringed. I was amazed at how good he was. And BTW, except for that role, I still can’t stand him!
Charlize Theron in Monster . I lived in Florida during the whole Wuornos trial and thought there was no way she’d pull it off. She nailed the character perfectly!
That didn’t surprise me; I first saw Hoskins doing comedy–the British miniseries “Flickers” on Masterpiece Theater, years before his heavy roles like “Mona Lisa”. A lot of British actors switch-hit like that; Judy Dench was on a sitcom for several years.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Billie Piper on the new “Doctor Who”–not that she pulls off an unexpected role, but that she can act at all. I’d heard of her only as a teen pop tart turned tabloid stalking object, sort of a British Britney Spears. But the tart has talent. Who knew?
I hope you’ll forgive me for disagreeing with you here. But I do agree about how well she played Buffy.
I’d like to add to the list Giovanni Ribisi, who surprised me in The Boiler Room, since I’d only seen him play Frank Jr. on Friends prior to that.
I may be alone here, but I didn’t think Anthony Hopkins was going to come anywhere close to pulling off Nixon. I thought “stunt casting, way too recognizable, etc.”
But I’ll be damned if he didn’t do it.
I was also pleasantly surprised at how effective Elijah Wood was in Sin City. Sure, he didn’t have any lines, but damn was he creepy.
Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights. Apparently (well, according to the notoriously unreliable imdb) Leonardo DiCaprio was offered the role, and while I htink he’s an excellent actor it just wouldn;t have been the same.
Johnny Depp in Ed Wood. He always plays such moody characters but in this movie he was vivacious, enthusiastic, and even goofy. It was the first time I realized he could actually act…
