Movie casting can feel a little... well,
samey... from time to time. Look, here's Tom Cruise, and he's playing another generic action hero called Jack, and it's totally impossible for me to differentiate between this guy and all the other generic action hero characters Cruise has played over the last decade or so. Even when an actor is consciously trying to mix it up, it can come across as samey: take Johnny Depp, for example, whose "quirky" characters are thrust upon movie-goers so frequently that they've all kind of blended into one. Really weird, that. So it's nice, then, when - on occassion - filmmakers make casting decisions that seem totally off the wall, inappropriate or balls to the walls crazy, only for said decision to pay off in droves. When you hear or glimpse somebody filling in a role or playing a character that you don't naturally associate them with, it can be a little off-putting... but if they somehow manage to expose a brand new layer you never saw coming, well, wouldn't it be good if we could see a little more of that? Here's 10 totally off the wall casting choices that were - against all expectations - awesome...