10 Movies That Changed Your Mind About Actors You Hated

2. Punch Drunk Love - Adam Sandler

Nowadays, it's hard to think of Adam Sandler as anything else but "the worst thing to happen to movies since the German government said they'd pay for Uwe Boll to make movies," but there was a period in the Earth's history where this guy was considered to be a comic gem of sorts. All right, so maybe "gem" is a bit strong, but you get what I mean: Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy, though not timeless, genre-bending comedy flicks, were well worth the price of a movie ticket, and Adam Sandler made for amusing (if not questionably retarded) protagonists. As of, oh, 2005, there is no good will left in the world for Adam Sandler: people want this guy to stop making movies and for him to throw in the towel. But it didn't always have to come to this. Sandler very nearly established himself as a serious actor of worth when he appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, in which he played Barry Egan, a guy who sells toilet plungers and ends up getting caught in a whirlwind romance. Sandler is virtually unrecognisable in the movie: subtle and exposing hidden depths, film critic Roger Ebert compared him to Dennis Hooper. Who'd thunk?