10 Unusual Film Roles That Helped Actors Avoid Being Typecast

4. Jonah Hill - Moneyball

Talk about a surprising career trajectory. Jonah Hill started off as one of the Apatow gang, a group of actors who starred in a bunch of sophomoric comedies all directed by Judd Apatow. He was just this chubby little guy who was the butt of most of the jokes, but no one really thought that his career was going to go anywhere. If anything, he kind of plays second fiddle to a lot of the bigger stars in the film, even though his comedic style was liked by audiences and praised by critics. A guy like that, though...he's probably not going to be able to anything besides comedy, right? Well, not so much. To the surprise of practically everyone, he's actually pretty good with drama, when he's toning down the clown act. In Moneyball, he played the dedicated baseball statistician who first came up with the algorithm to determine which players were undervalued in terms of the contributions they would make to their team. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance, honestly just because the Academy was shocked that he pulled off the role without even one, "Ask me about my weiner!" moment. Did he deserve the nod? Eh...maybe. But more importantly, it had people thinking of him as a serious actor. Without Moneyball, he never would have gotten his role in The Wolf of Wall Street (a performance that actually did deserve an Oscar nomination), and we'd still be thinking of him as just another chubby comedian.