10 Amazing Roles That Saved Typecast Actors

9. Patrick Swayze - Donnie Darko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0AwDW0x5Xw Donnie Darko is primarily remembered for helping to make Jake Gyllenhaal and Richard Kelly overnight stars as actor and writer-director respectively, but there's one mightily under-appreciated facet of this film which often goes unnoticed, and that's Patrick Swayze's sublimely creepy performance as cheese-ball motivational speaker Jim Cunningham, a man with a deep, dark secret beneath all that self-confidence. Given that Swayze's career consisted primarily of playing the hunky love interest in films like Dirty Dancing and Ghost, this was a real break from convention for the actor; his Jim Cunningham puts Swayze's suave charm to an entirely different use, allowing him to operate as a slickly charismatic man who is, in fact, a paedophile. The character was controversial with the actor's fans, though demonstrated he had more range than people ever gave him credit for. Though he never again went this daring, it nevertheless shattered the perception of him as a well-mannered, good-looking leading man and little else.