10 Actors Who Tried To Play Against Type (And Failed)

10. Elijah Wood - Green Street Hooligans

Fame and success can lead to typecasting as Wood soon found out when he played Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings series. So pitch-perfect was he as the innocent young hobbit, that there weren't a lot of other different roles being offered to him afterwards.

Props to him then, as he tried to drastically shake up his image by staring in this UK football hooligan drama. Wood is about as far away from an east London hellraiser as you can get, but that's also the point of the film, as he plays an innocent 'yank' that is adopted by a tough football firm and is transformed into a tough streetfighter.

Yet, despite the entire movie structurally built around Wood's character arc he's never able to make that convincing transition into a 'hard geezer' in the end, with this showy stunt casting being moot and plain awkward.

Wood would fair much better in later against-type roles like Sin City and (especially) Maniac.