Peter Graves was in Airplane! as well, pulling off a serious guy to comedic performance with grace.
I think it works in the movie because most of the funny lines are delivered as straight as possible. Ordinarily, there would be no way to get that many serious actors to deliver such great comedy. The writing absolutely sells itself.
“Ever been to a Turkish prison?”
I mean, when you can get a classic comedic performance out of Kareem Ab-frickin-dul Jabbar (“tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes”), a man with a congenital absence of charisma, then you know you have a genius script.
To the OP, I’d say the great performances turned in by rap stars. Rock stars, generally, make shit actors (with some notable exceptions including Bjork as mentioned above). For some reason I can’t even really think of very many rock stars-to-actors turning in great performances. I’m sure there are a few (Bowie in Labryinth? :/) – the only ones sticking in my head is Marky Mark in Boogie Nights. But rap stars have turned in some great performances – Ice Cube in Three Kings, Friday, Barbershop, Queen Latifah in Chicago, Ice-T in New Jack City, Eminem in Eight Mile although there wasn’t much acting involved, Snoop Dogg’s small role in Training Day was decent, do we get to include Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation and Ali?
Here’s another vote for Leo DiCaprio… in yet a different movie. I just couldn’t envision myself buying into him as an old Howard Hughes, but I sure did.
Speaking of Dennis Leary in Ice Age, how about George Carlin in Thomas the Tank Engine?!? ("And Thomas scowled to Percy, 'That Sir Topham Hat’s a real c*sucker!)
That’s easy: Diane Keaton in The Little Drummer Girl, perhaps my favorite John Le Carré story. I’d rarely been as disheartened as I was when I learned she had been cast in the lead as Charlie, who was a very complex and fascinating character that seemed well beyond her range. I just could not see Keaton capturing her at all. Furthermore, Charlie was a young (20-ish) Brit and Keaton was a 30-something American.
But she did a very creditable job, I thought, and she surprised me in this. I’m a big fan of the film, in part because it starred an always-mesmerizing Klaus Kinski and in part because intelligent, wonderfully plotted intrigue movies are very much my cuppa.
Remark to my bro as we left the theater: “bet he took that role just to get rid of all the “ooooh, it’s a hobbit” remarks.”
All he did was be there and he was Scarier that all 9 Nazguls together… that was a night of many trips to the bathroom, yes it was!
Actually, now that someone has mentioned Leslie Nielson, I gotta say it was a shock to me to see him playing a serious role on Due South as Sergeant Buck Frobiser. That said, he only played that role seriously for the first 15-20 minutes of the episode, and then he went into slapstick Mountie mode (I figured out that he’s serious when he’s out of uniform, and goofy when in uniform. It’s just that he’s in uniform for the majority of the show).
Angela Lansbury was astonishing in the original Manchurian Candidate. I’d only ever seen her do **Murder She Wrote ** and one goofy-ass old Danny Kaye movie. In **Manchurian Candidate ** she was a villian, she was very scary, and she was very very damn good. Awesome performance.
Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd. He’s sinister, loathesome, and cold. Despite the character being a “country boy,” he’s as far from Andy Taylor as you can get.
I’ve noticed that most of the replies have been people who were pleasantly surprised by people who pulled off roles that they didn’t look to be up to the task of performing. I’ll go the other way:
Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons. I thought there was no way he was going to be bad enough to fit in with that cast and script. He proved me wrong. He sank to the level of the worst movie of that year – and then some. Painful.
Thou shalt not diss the Kaminsky boy! No one does goofy-ass as well as him, plus he’s a brilliant credible serious performer (when he was alive and everything).
Nonono. *Not * dissing Danny. Geez, my father would disown me if I dared say anything bad about Danny Kaye, you have no idea. Keep your voice down, for God’s sake.
I’m just saying that, in my opinion, Angela Lansbury’s role in that film (was it The Court Jester?) wasn’t what you’d call compelling or powerful. Which she was in MC, and I didn’t know she had it in her. That’s all.
Ludacris actually played his role with tact and understanding. He was the best actor in the movie. (But not the best role. The best role was the locksmith Daniel, played by Michael Pena)
The cool thing about Ludacris is that he had some depth and subtlety. A lot of rappers make good loud, scenery-chewing actors (nothing at all wrong with that; I will see an Ice Cube movie just for Ice Cube). But the scene where…
The black TV exec hands him back his gun and lets him out of the car saying, “You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself.”
…the look on Ludacris’ face is incredibly poignant.
I’d like to add David Schwimmer as Captain Sobel along with Ron Livingston as Captain Nixon in Band of Brothers. I had only seen Ron in Office Space and David in Friends but thought both did an excellent job with their role.
He’s got serious roles, though, and serious Robin Williams roles. A lot of his serious roles are just a chance for him to be Crazy, Manic Robin Williams in a serious context; Patch Adams, The Fisher King, Good Morning Vietnam, etc. But he, to my surprise, can do quiet, reserved roles too, such as Awakenings.
As long as I’m sitting here watching On Demand series I’ve never seen, let me add Timothy Oliphant in Deadwood. Everything I’ve seen him in, he’s been kind of an earlier generation pretty boy / bad boy / easy role type guy. But he’s great in Deadwood.
I’m not saying he was like Ben Kingsley in Gandhi or anything, but I thought he did a pretty decent job. (At least he wasn’t SHOUTING! EVERY! LINE! to SHOW! HIS! EMOTIONS!, like he usually does.)
