It took me a few minutes to recognize Samuel L Jackson in Kill Bill. Also, Jon Gries in Real Genius.
Didn’t recognize Brittany Murphy in The Devil’s Arithmetic until the checked the credits. And to think I just saw Sin City a few days before I watched this on DVD. *So-so film but she was wonderful in this one. *
Yeah, that surprised me too!
A beardless Richard Dryfess in The Graduate (Should I call the cops?).
It seems a lot of people are surprised to find out that’s David Bowie as Tesla in “The Prestige”.
Might not have been a surprise to some people, but I kept wondering who the hired gunman was at the end of Shane until IMBD told me it was a young Jack Palance, who I’ve actually met.
Spoilers for the late-80s movie Made In Heaven, which starred Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis follow.
Again, if make-up counts, I would have never known that Debra Winger played that weird angel Emmett had someone not told me much later. In the movie Emmett is credited coyly as “Himself.”
Sir Rhosis
A pleasingly built (i.e., non-anorexic) Lara Flynn Boyle in How I Got Into College.
I sure didn’t recognize Cameron Diaz or John Cusack in Being John Malkovich.
Somewhere in Zombies Of The Stratosphere, a young Leonard Nimoy stalks about in a cheesy costume, & I simply cannot pick him out of the crowd.
William Forsythe, then aged 40, played a 20something so convincingly in Palookaville that it never even occurred to me that it might be him, even though I knew he was in it. “Who’s that young guy? And where’s William Forsythe?”
And Mel Gibson was near-unrecognizable in The Singing Detective; my wife finally caught on that it was him by recognizing his voice. Nutjob or no, he was terrific in that movie.
If makeup counts-
Daryl Hannah in *Steel Magnolias * as “Anelle”
Just had one tonight – Willem Dafoe on American Dreamz. That’s definitely a makeup example though.
I did not recognize Tim Curry in Legend. I had only really seen him in Clue until then.
Angie Dickinson in “Pay It Forward”.
VCNJ~
Sean Penn in Carlito’s Way- I watched this entire thing, knowing he was in it, and at the end couldn’t tell you what character he played (Pacino’s lawyer- btw).
Alec Baldwin in Beetlejuice. It was on cable tonight, and I had forgotten all about him in it. He was about half the size he is now.
It took me a few viewings of This is Spinal Tap to recognize Dana Carvey.
Cusack stood out pretty quickly to me (same voice and mannerisms as in most of his other films), but Diaz completely disappeared. I remember seeing her name in the opening credits, looking around a bit for her, then forgetting she was in the film until the ending credits. “Holy crap, that was her?!”
Gary Oldman is often hard to spot. I missed him completely in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.