20 Actors Who Played Totally Against Type In Horror Movies

It's always incredibly fun to see actors playing massively against type in movies, in turn allowing them to showcase some versatility we never knew they had.

And this is especially true in the horror genre, which has so often served as a sandbox for performers to experiment. 

The heightened, surreal nature of most horror movies makes it an especially safe space for actors to try new things, and often the results can be spectacular enough to reinvent the actors' entire career.

Whether that was true of these 20 performers or not, each nevertheless proved their incredible range by ditching their archetypal casting and doing something totally different.

Perhaps they were best known for playing comic relief characters in broad studio comedies and decided to portray a serial killer instead, or maybe they ditched their tough guy persona to play a more vulnerable victim.

Whatever the circumstances, these actors all dared to try something different, and regardless of whether it fully paid off or not - in most cases it did, thankfully - they deserve credit for bravely putting themselves out there and demonstrating a whole other side of their skills...

Seann William Scott is of course best known for playing vulgar idiot Steve Stifler in the American Pie franchise, and elsewhere his filmography is mostly populated with roles in studio comedy films.

So nobody expected to see him cast as the serial killer protagonist of 2018's Bloodline, where he plays Evan Cole - a high school guidance counsellor who murders child abusers in his spare time.

But the film ultimately proved that Scott has far more range than most have ever given him credit for - despite his seemingly affable exterior, Scott brings a ferocious intensity to the scenes where Evan is killing his victims, enough that Stifler basically feels like a distant memory.

It was certainly a risky cast considering Scott's prior body of work, but he absolutely acquitted himself admirably, taking the assignment seriously and delivering a performance that left everyone re-evaluating his acting potential.

A few years later Scott dipped a toe back into the horror villain waters by playing the leader of a right-wing extremist cult in The Wrath of Becky, and once again he knocked it out of the park.