8 Actors Who Switched It Up Perfectly

Being typecast can be the most frustrating thing as an actor. Instead of getting some of those parts you believe you would do well in, you are constantly put back into the same role you have played time and time again. So, how do you get those other roles, the ones that change it up completely and show off a new side of you?

Well, it's tough, as once an audience sees you as a certain type of actor, that's usually it. However, there are but a few who over the years have completely shifted focus and taken filmgoers by shock.

These people have managed to find a way of breaking out of their lane and become something totally different in the process. Not everybody can be a Cate Blanchett or a Daniel Day-Lewis, shifting between one Oscar-nominated role after another without any regard for genre or demographic.

So, here we look at eight actors who managed to push themselves from one genre to another when nobody expected it, and entirely transform the audience's expectations of them in the process.

A man who got his fame a bit later than some others, Steve Carell starred in Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin just a year apart at the age of 41/42. Everybody loved him as Brick Tamland, the completely vacuous weatherman, and as Andy Stitzer, he had everybody in stitches in his quest to get laid.

He would have been able to keep starring in comedy films for the rest of his career without any problems but Carell fancied taking on a dramatic role and landed it in Foxcatcher.

He was haunting, unpredictable and unnerving as John DuPont, the heir to the DuPont fortune and a man who paid out to coach the US Wrestling team at his Foxcatcher farm-estate, attempting to turn them into a dynasty of Olympic champions.

Carell just changed everything we expected of him in one total 180. He had taken a couple of more grounded characters before, such as Dan, in Dan In Real Life and as Frank Ginsberg in Little Miss Sunshine, though, nothing prepared the audience for what they were about to witness in Foxcatcher.

DuPont was convicted of the murder of Dave Schultz with diminished responsibility because of mental illness, something that Carell brought to his portrayal stunningly well.

Since then, Carell has appeared in The Big Short, The Morning Show, and Beautiful Boy, all in dramatic roles for which he has been praised.