10 Serious Actors Who Successfully Made The Jump To Comedy

There was a long stretch of time in the 80s and early 90s when Christopher Walken was the go-to guy for playing intense psychopaths. Sadistic mobsters, cold-blooded mercenaries, callous KGB agents, nutjob comic book villains, archangels with dark souls...the guy has played just about every brand of madman there is.

And he did it so well that no one could really picture him as anything else.

That perception started to change once Walken hosted Saturday Night Live in 1990. Suddenly, he wasn't just a world-renowned lunatic, he was also "the guy from The Continental sketch". Bit parts in Wayne's World 2 and Pulp Fiction helped the general public realize there was a funny side to his weirdness.

There's a certain unique energy that Walken has that allows him to move between charmingly goofy and chillingly evil without breaking stride. It's a trait that maybe only three or four other living actors possess, and is a big reason the man's such a treasure.

Nowadays, Walken is just as well known for his role in the "More Cowbell" sketch or for his Tooth Fairy monologue in The Rundown as he is for his deadly serious work in The Deer Hunter and The Prophecy.