6 MORE Actors Who Broke Typecasting In The Most Epic Way

4. Jim Carrey - The Truman Show

His Type

After breaking out with Ace Ventura, Jim Carrey set expectations that he was going to be a very funny actor who was very reliant on flamboyant, mugging performances. For the first two years after his arrival as a Big Deal, that's pretty much all he did with only The Cable Guy standing out as a darker movie. And even that has a lot of his usual mugging antics in it.

How He Broke It

These days, Carrey seems to flit between more dramatic roles and sillier ones (as with following up his role in Kidding with his forthcoming performance in the Sonic movie). He wouldn't be in a position to do that were it not for the Truman Show, which might have been a comedy, but which was heavy on pathos in a way he hadn't explored before that.

The script gave him the space to really act, proving his dramatic chops as he played Truman as a straight (if slightly cookie) character in a very dark, perverse world. It opened a lot of eyes and he's since gone on to play more dramatic roles as in Man On The Moon, The Majestic and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.