8 Actors Who Switched It Up Perfectly

From comedy to drama, to drama to comedy. Leslie Nielsen was as fine an actor as you could find working in the supporting roles of some movies and television. He was 54 when he got the role of Doctor Rumack in Airplane! and never once looked back afterwards.

Nielsen went from being a working dramatic actor to a comedy star overnight. His performance as Rumack remains legendary to this day and he is still widely recognised as a comedy giant on the screen.

When going back to watch the slapstick, whacky parody movie of other air-based drama-disaster movies, it is hard to say that it doesn't hold up better than most of them today. Famously written to stuff in as many jokes as they could, Nielsen brought them to life with a stiff, straight point-of-view that only a man who'd worked in drama his whole life could have done.

Casting a comedy actor would have further pushed the film into its own premise and would have been less funny than the straight down the line performance that Nielsen gave.

He'd go on to do the Naked Gun trilogy and a plethora of other slapstick roles, though apart from his performance as Frank Drebin, nothing matched that or Airplane! Don't call him Shirley.