9 Movie Heroes Who Lived Long Enough To Become The Villain

6. Robin Williams - One Hour Photo

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Fox Searchlight

The late Robin Williams's ability to bring a deft blend of comedy and drama to the screen was one of his greatest skills. He also had an unexpected talent for playing eerie villains, as witnessed by his incredibly creepy turn in the 2002 dark thriller One Hour Photo. 

After Hollywood had exhausted Williams' comic sensibilities with increasingly flat films like Flubber, director Mark Romanek opted to cast Williams in the role of a disturbed photo technician named Seymour Parrish.

Playing off of the back of Williams' reputation as a hyperactive funnyman, One Hour Photo had him as the antithesis of everything we'd come to know from his larger than life turns: subdued and quiet, with shifty mannerisms and buggy facial expressions, his obsessive character made for seriously uncomfortable viewing.

Seeing Williams - one of the most likeable men in Hollywood - in the role of such a chilling weirdo felt inherently wrong at the time, but in retrospect he revealed a real knack for darker characters (and even appeared as an equally unnerving killer in Christopher Nolan's chilly thriller Insomnia later in the same year).

Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.