10 Actors Who Won Everyone Over With ONE Performance

It's rather ironic that Gossip Girl star Blake Lively's first foray into "real acting" - a supporting role in Ben Affleck's 2010 thriller The Town - saw some critics deem her too young and wildly miscast in the role of a Boston-accented trainwreck of a single mother.

Ironic why? Because the part that allowed Lively to finally be taken seriously as an actress also saw her acting out of her age range, albeit by design. 

In The Age of Adaline, Lively plays a woman who stopped ageing at 29 following an accident, and by the time the narrative reaches the modern day, Lively is straight-up playing a 107-year-old who looks like, well, Blake Lively.

She does a fantastic job portraying not only the strangeness of the central phenomenon, but also the tragedy of it, of how Adaline's agelessness forces her to remain on the move to avoid detection, even leaving loved ones behind.

In the wrong hands it'd be tough to take such a heightened role seriously, but Lively absolutely nails it, and followed up with another top-notch performance in 2016's survival thriller The Shallows.