20 Brilliant Sci-Fi & Fantasy Films Where Actors Play Opposite Themselves

The mouthful that is Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula tends to get remembered for two reasons: Gary Oldman and Keanu Reeves. One gave one of the finest performances of his career, understanding, engaging with and expanding upon both the source material and the script, and the other was so wooden he almost dusted Dracula on contact.

But behind the men, and their weird and wonderful variety of performances, is a young woman keeping the whole thing tethered. Oldman plays Dracula, Reeves plays solicitor Jonathan Harker, and Winona Ryder plays Mina Murray, the object of everyone’s desire, whose likeness to the Count’s old flame Elisabeta is more than passing.

Ryder plays a dual role as Mina and Dracula's dead wife, providing both an aesthetic reason for his fascination with her, as well as a symbolic throughline. By allowing Dracula to find his lost love in another form, Coppola offers an opportunity for redemption that the big guy doesn’t often get. And, for her part, Ryder didn’t phone it in either, going the whole hog with the elaborate costumes and learning the Romanian for the scenes as Elisabeta.