10 Actors Who Just Played Against Type (And KILLED It)
These actors sure rose to the challenge - and then some.
It's little surprise that most actors don't venture far outside their comfort zone very often, because once you've established a successful niche for yourself, why mess with a working formula, right?
But cinema lovers do nevertheless get a great thrill out of seeing actors do something totally outside of their wheelhouse.
It's obviously a huge risk in more ways than one, but when it works it can totally reinvent an actor's career - one of the more prominent examples being Liam Neeson's latter-career divergence into action hero roles.
Not all actors can play against type and nail it all the time, but when it works, it's a glorious sight to behold. And so with that in mind, these 10 actors all just recently played against their typical casting and it absolutely paid off.
From actors known for playing heroic characters taking on wretched antagonists to charismatic charmers playing the total opposite, and supporting players finally getting time to shine in the main event limelight, these actors all went to totally new places and totally nailed it.
Hell, some of them fared well enough to court major awards attention and, in one case, even win the big gong outright...
10. Mark Ruffalo - Poor Things
Mark Ruffalo's career is largely defined by playing good-natured and heroic characters, from Bruce Banner aka The Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the intrepid, integrity-filled journalist Michael Rezendes in Spotlight.
But for Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things, Ruffalo was cast in a role so flagrantly against type that he even tried to talk the filmmaker out of casting him, to which Lanthimos simply - and sensibly - laughed.
In the movie, Ruffalo portrays Duncan Wedderburn, a seemingly highfalutin lawyer whose fancy accent and fancier clothes belie the fact that he's actually both intensely debauched and totally pathetic.
Ruffalo's typically clipped, reserved affect is switched out for an intentionally over-the-top rendition of a foppish tosspot whose monstrous attempts to stall the maturity of his love interest, Bella Baxter (a phenomenal Emma Stone) quickly become both nauseating and hilarious.
Ruffalo, who was anxious about playing such a darkly comedic character, nevertheless spoke about his desire to "break all the perceptions" of him as an actor, and that he certainly did, enough that he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work.