I hate disagreeing with you, spoke-, but I really don’t see it. He’s always got the same face under all those variations of hair.
Ah, so it’s the makeup artists we’re really praising?
Because the characterizations, accents and mannerisms are wildly different.
The evidence on Jeffrey Wright:
Broken Flowers
Basquiat
Basquiat
Lackawanna Blues
Ride With the Devil
Shaft
And again, the characterizations are wildly different.
Jeffrey Wright was the first actor I thought of when I opened this thread. I remmeber being blown away that the same actor who played the CIA guy in last year’s Casino Royale was the same actor I’d seen in the title role of 1996’s Basquiat.
And speaking of James Bond, he’s not a chameleon any more, but how many people remember Daniel Craig in Love Is the Devil or Elizabeth?
Oh, and who else remembers Paul Giamatti’s scene in Saving Private Ryan? Of course, he wasn’t famous back then, but recently I was shocked to realize that was him. And when I looked him up on imdb.com, Man! I’ve seen him in so many movies and never recognized him once until he hit it big. He even did Woody Allen! (Mighty Aphrodite and Deconstructing Harry.)
No, I agree with Lou. Depp was my answer too.
Since Pirates, Depp is a big enough star that you watch his movies thinking, “This is a Johnny Depp movie,” but if you had never heard of him and you watched a handful of his movies, it wouldn’t be at all obvious that it was the same guy.
A similar thing might be true for Robin Williams: he’s famous enough that you can’t help thinking, “Hey! That’s Robin Williams!” But if somebody came here from another planet, where they’d never heard of Robin Williams, I could imagine them not recognizing from one movie to the next that he was the same guy.
Lots of names posted I would agree with, but I would addJenette Goldstein.
From the Irish mother in Titantic, to the buff no nonsense marine Vasquez in Aliens, to the southern vampire in Near Dark…she always looks so different to me!
While some good choices are listed, I would say Jeffery Wright, maybe D’Orfonio, and lastly Toni Collette get honorable mention (with Jeffery Wright taking a close second), to the undoubtedly the greatest chamaeleon ever: Gary Oldman. The man doesn’t even need make-up.
While there are some good choices mentioned in this thread, there is only one true master: Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, sr? (cite)
Crap—JUST beaten to the punch!
I just couldn’t disagree more.
I have seen Depp since the beginning of his career and I always recognize him immediately.
Now Vincent D’Onofrio really surprised me, I had no idea it was him in Full Metal Jacket or The Cell.