8 Great Actors Who Didn't Realise They Were Being Weirdly Typecast

By Jack Pooley / March 23, 2021

2. Paul Dano Is...Mentally Ill

Some actors just have a knack for playing mentally ill, even unhinged characters, and Paul Dano sure has leaned into that over the course of his career.

Examples: Dano has played a serial killer (Taking Lives), a suicidal homeless man (The Good Heart), a young man with the IQ of a 10-year-old (Prisoners), a paranoid schizophrenic (Love and Mercy) and a suicidal man who believes a washed-up corpse has come to life (Swiss Army Man).

It's something of a running joke by this point that Dano seems so adept at playing deranged and lost souls, but at least to his credit he's played them in a wide variety of genres, from thriller, to drama, biopic and even off-kilter comedy, which from his perspective probably doesn't seem quite so samey.