This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.
Playing Against Type
The hiring of an actor to play a certain part which differs fundamentally from roles the actor is famous for or has played in the past. For instance, an actress who is known for playing kindly old grandma types suddenly cast as a scheming murderess. This is generally done when an actor wants to 'stretch his/her wings' or 'try something different'. It usually leads to an Oscar for the actor in question. Often, it can be very useful in The Reveal. Comedies will frequently use this trope for laughs; a wacky line will often sound much funnier coming out of the mouth of someone you'd never expect to say such a thing.
The polar opposite of Type Casting. A source of Hidden Depths. Can lead to What The Hell, Casting Agency? when it doesn't work.
For specific forms of Playing Against Type, see Tom Hanks Syndrome, Leslie Nielsen Syndrome, and New Sound Album.
Megumi Hayashibara was chosen to play Rei Ayanami, who became the archetypical Emotionless Girl; at the time, Hayashibara had become famous for her portrayals of Bokukko, Genki Girls, and generally outspoken characters — characters like Asuka Langley Soryuu, basically.
This is also the case in the English dub where Amanda Winn Lee, more known for playing hyperactive Rio in the Burn Up! series, filled the part of Rei.
Interviews from the Rebuild 2.0 Complete Records indicate that the makers deliberately cast voice actors whose voice and image would conflict with the characters, which is why they continued the tradition by having Maaya Sakamoto play the very eccentric Blood Knight Mari Makinami.
Lelouch, the Magnificent BastardAnti-Hero, is played by Jun Fukuyama, an actor known for playing more straightforward heroes like Touga Tenkuji. Meanwhile Suzaku, the White Knight, is played by Takahiro Sakurai, known for playing Anti-Heroes like Cloud Strife. Reportedly this surprised even the other voice actors, who assumed that the two would be cast in the opposite role. Director/co-creator Goro Taniguchi has said he did this on purpose, to show that Lelouch and Suzaku are both trying very hard to be something they aren't.
The US dub got this as well, with Lelouch being played by Johnny Yong Bosch, best known for being a former Power Ranger, while Suzaku is played by Yuri Lowenthal, best known for playing Sasuke Uchiha. The dub's producers remarked that Taniguchi had a hand in the casting, indicating that he pulled the stunt a second time.
The aforementioned Power Rangers alumnus Johnny Yong Bosch has had several roles that could be considered playing against type.
He went further against type in Persona 4, where he plays Tohru Adachi, a seemingly incompetent Butt Monkey of a police detective, which is a far cry from his usual heroic roles. This becomes even more apparent when it turns out that not only is Adachi the killer, he's an Ax CrazyComplete Monster to boot.
While being cast as Izaya Orihara could also be considered Playing Against Type, Johnny's basically established "evil, slimy, and/or manipulative bastard" as his secondary type at this point.
Actually, Bosch has a second secondary type other than playing slimy anti-heroes/villains: the soft spoken/whiny young boys. There are Renton and Claus among quite a few others.
Rie Tanaka usually provides voices for peaceful, meek and/or strait-laced heroines like Chii from Chobits, Lacus Clyne and Meer Campbell from the Gundam SEED verse, and Yomi from Azumanga Daioh...but she was also the voice behind at least three devious/brutal villains: Suigintou from Rozen Maiden, Tomoe Marguerite from Mai-Otome, and Liang Qi from Canaan.
Her performance as gorgeous exhibitionist high school teacher Yoshimine Mitsuka in DearS, who likes to strip down to her lingerie in front of her students and, at least in the manga version, openly stated that it turned her on to know that teenagers were checking out her body. In fact, she nearly seemed to be having an orgasm when she said that...
Another voice actor which falls into this category is Yuko Goto, most known for her cute-and-vulnerable moe-roles like Mikuru Asahina. She is really a down-to-asphalt motorcycle-devotee and actually voiced her own caricature, the hyper-masculine Yakuza-styled Gotouza, in Lucky Star.
Jurota Kosugi, known for usually voicing villains, plays the late Asuma Sarutobi in Naruto and its sequel Naruto Shippuden.
English dub example: Steven Blum, who tends to be cast as impossibly cool leading men like Spike Spiegel.
Many people were surprised to hear him in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann as the extremely Camp Gay Leeron. It should be noted that his range is far from limited.
In Lego Batman, there are plenty of characters that are his type, like Batman, The Joker, Two-Face, Killer Croc... except Killer Moth, who's possibly the biggest loser in Gotham, and Blum voiced him too.
Then there's Azumanga Daioh, where he played... a cat. Okay, it's Chiyo-Dad, so it's not completely out there, but still... a freaking cat!
Who can forget the melon-loving, v-shaped demon from Zatch Bell!, the almighty Victoreem-sama? VERY MERON!!!
It was just as weird when he played a dog statue in Yoshinaga Chi No Gargoyle.
He also played the Lemony Narrator of Hayate the Combat Butler; a voice job not only totally at odds with his usual hard tone, but also so oily that it can melt butter from a range of thirty feet.
In this specific instance, however, Vic originally tried out for the role of Gino Weinberg, a goofy and cheerful character more his type (and he's said that he really wanted the role too). Gino ending up going to Dave Wittenberg while Vic was cast as the psychopathic Luciano Bradley instead.
His role as Mamoru in RahXephon is also against type. The character initially seems to be a Jerk with a Heart of GoldBromantic Foil, but then shows himself to be a Jerkass and does a Face Heel Turn. So, Vic playing him goes against his usual casting as heroic characters.
For that matter, he also played Rom Ro in Heroic Age, who is not only the closest thing the series has to a Big Bad, but is very quiet and pensive.
The Gundam 00 series seems to apply this trope intentionally.
Tohru Furuya, who typically play heroes like Amuro Ray, Chiba Mamoru, and Pegasus Seiya, plays Ribbons. Initially thought to be a side character, he turns out to be the Man Behind the Man (season 1) AND the Big Bad (season 2).
And one of the villains in the fourth Bleach movie, Shuuren.
Aside from Furuya, many seiyus of past Gundam protagonists or a Major Supporting character voiced antagonists within the series namely; Romi Paku (Loran), Kazuki Yao (Judau), Daisuke Namikawa (Al), Tetsu Shiratori (Sai) and Keiji Fujiwara (Eledore). The English version followed suit with the casting of voice actors such as Scott McNeil as AliAl-Saachez (Duo), Kirby Morrow as Billy (Trowa), Nicole Bouma as Nena (Meyrin), Meryke Hendrikse as Liu Mei (Lunamaria) and Michael Adamwhaite as Ribbons (Yzak).
Possibly the biggest surprise in 00 may have been the casting of Brad Swaile as Setsuna F. Seiei. Swaile was at this point best known for his emotional characters (and yes that includes Light, who while sociopathic is still rather hammy and over the top at points), and the casting of him as the nearly emotionless, traumatised Setsuna was a surprising one. It still worked out pretty well though.
Scott Mc Neil would later play another Complete Monster Antoine from Dead Rising 2 an insane cannibal chef who kidnaps people and cooks them alive to be made into his "special dish" so he can be famous.
Rie Kugimiya, who is commonly known for her Tsundere characters including the "Four Tsundere Wonders" Shana, Louise, Nagi, and Taiga, is often pigeonholed into these types of roles. This just makes the exceptions stand out all the more.
She was also the upbeat Rise from Persona 4. Hell, there's even a comic out there referencing this trope...
She also plays Natsu's partner Happy in Fairy Tail. Interestingly enough, during the Nirvana/Oracion Seis arc, Happy becomes smitten with Wendy's partner Charle, who happens to be a tsundere...
A special case is that of Yua Sakurai, who has a lot of Rie's more famous characters' traits (long wavy hair, short stature), but is actually quite a nice girl.
She's also voiced Emotionless BoyMiharu Rokujou, which is definitely a huge contrast to some other roles she's played.
Her first male role was the sweet Kaname (also known as Taiki) in Twelve Kingdoms. So yeah, that was her first pigeonholing, and then jumped into another...
07th Expansion, responsible for the When They Cry series loves to have voice actors do this, especially when casting them in supposedly pigeonholed roles, only for the character's true nature to come out:
Daisuke Ono: Known for playing charming bishounen, has played Mamoru Akasaka and plays stubborn, rebellious, somewhat perverted Battler Ushiromiya.
Rie Kugimiya: Famous for her tsundere loli roles, plays kind and surprisingly... complexMeido Shannon.
Soichiro Hoshi: Often cast as passive characters who snap. His role, Keiichi Maebara snaps a number of times, but is anything but passive.
Yukari Tamura, who has played many happy-go-lucky lolis:
Yui Horie: Made famous by her cute (and occasionally Tsundere) roles. Although Hanyuu is very cute, she's very pessimistic. Maria Ushiromiya is also very cute, but she is also very creepy.
The actor who played L in the English dub of Death Note, Allesandro Julliani, had previously mainly voice acted as the Prince Charming equivalents in the Barbie movies.
This is really playing against the type when you consider that L is said to be socially awkward and has no luck in romantic areas. Not that L really cares.
Masami Kikuchi is one of the few who do this in the same franchise.
And then there's The Prince Of Tennis, where he's the very hammy and vain Wakato.
Brad Swaile was usually cast as awkward and/or dorky characters, usually teenagers. Then comes the Death Note dub, and he plays Magnificent Bastard main character Light Yagami. This totally works and is generally considered to be his best performance ever.
Plus, Swaile usually plays lead characters, like the afore-mentioned Light Yagami, but in Shakugan no Shana, he was Keisaku Sato, a minor character.
He was also "Slappy" from Dead Rising 2 a giggling delusional lunatic who believed himself to actually be the mascot he was portraying in costume while wielding a pair of flame throwers spraying them in random directions.
Susumu Chiba tends to be associated with calm bishonens like Castor from 07 Ghosts and Sai from Hikaru no Go. Yet he also plays middle aged gorillastalker Kondo Isao in Gintama. I kid you not.
BlazBlue is one huge testimony of Tetsuya Kakihara Playing Against Type. The man who was known for his young, sometimes naive, but undeniably heroic roles like Simon or Shing Meteoryte gets landed in the role of Jin Kisaragi, arrogant Jerkass extraordinaire, practically a Knight in Shining ArmorGone Horribly Wrong. If that wasn't enough, Tetsuya Kakihara also voices Jin's future self, Hakumen, who speaks in a deep and slightly mechanical voice, and a boomingLarge Ham at that!
Kaori Shimizu was formerly known for her deep, sometimes deadpan voice but mostly tough voices that is suited for KuudereAction Girls (Case in point: Signum).
In another English dub example, Laura Bailey seems to voice a lot of cute, generally innocent teenage girls (such as Keiko/Kayko Yukimura from Yu Yu Hakusho, Tohru Honda from Fruit's Basket, Marta in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.)
But then she also voices Lust in Fullmetal Alchemist! Wow!
AND Shutaro Mendou (Urusei Yatsura's, version of Mitaka), and Kazamatsuri from Yawara (a Romantic False Lead again), not to mention Ryo from City Hunter. He did a LOT of romantic rivals/sex maniacs. Some fans think the action hero bit was just a sidelight (he was also Kinkuman, but no one brings that up)..
Kenta Miyake as Genma in Darker than Black is a lot like the Nena Trinity example mentioned above, where the actor plays a character who on the surface seems like their typical role (in this case, tall, deep-voiced Big Guy characters), but is revealed to be insane and evil. Also, as with Steve Blum, the actor sometimes plays against type with Camp Gay characters.
Maryke Hendrikse is known for playing Genki Girls and the shy type, but in Black Lagoon she plays Revy the angry, violent, foul mouthed protagonist who is a Heroic Sociopath.
Ryuzaburo Otomo manages to play against type while playing a character within his type! In Dragon Ball Z, he voices Dabura, a sinister devil under the control of Babidi. When he is killed by Majin Buu, however, his soul is deemed too evil to be punished in Hell, so his punishment is to be sent to Heaven, where he suddenly becomes aFriend to All Living Things, which everyone close to him finds creepy.
Greg Ayres is known for playing innocent young boys or fun loving teenagers, but he has played vastly different characters at least twice first in Fullmetal Alchemist he voiced Bido a former human who has been turned into a lizard chimera who is a con artist and trouble maker and in Gantz he voices Hajime Muroto a psychotic teenage serial killer and rapist.
In both Samurai 7 and Nightraid1931, he voices characters who initially seem to fit his fun-loving, easy going type, but are revealed to have Stepford Smiler traits and are actually less nice/more melancholic than you'd expect.
Kenji Utsumi often is the go-guy for voicing rather big characters, yet in the Red Ribbon Army saga, he voices the leader of the eponymous villainous army, Commander Red... who is a complete midget. Still met up with the other standard of being a Military dictator, though.
And let's not forget about his role as Gimli in the Japanese dub of The Lord of the Rings movies.
In the English dub of Linebarrels of Iron, Todd Haberkorn, who generally plays heroes or comic relief characters channels a Ribbons wannabe main villain, who is assisted by a character voiced by Vic Mignogna, who generally (with some exceptions, see above) gets the same kind of casting. In the other direction, Jerry Jewell, who often plays sinister characters, is cast as a cool Nice Guy.
He also does the voice of Death The Kid from Soul Eater. That's right, Vegeta's little brother Tarble is also a grim reaper who suffers from massive OCD and believes everything should be symmetrical.
Freeman's stereotype as a Badass because he was played against type. His first popular major role was Justy Ueki Tylor, played against when he was given the role of Zelgadis of Slayers.
But she is also the one to play Kunio Murai's Hot Mom in Great Teacher Onizuka, the very feminine and sexy Julia Murai...who is also a construction worker though!
The true against type for her is Princess Emeraude from Magic Knight Rayearth, who is tiny, willowy, super feminine and NOT EVEN TOUGH. That is, until her lover is killed... but even her feminine touch still lived on. The show, however, also has a more in-type role for Megumi Ogata, though: Eagle Vision.
Show Hayami is mostly known to voice characters who appear good but in fact they are evil sociopaths that love playing with people's minds and torturing them like Aizen in Bleach. Yet, he also voices characters completely different from his normal type like Ichiya or Umibozu in Gintama. Or if you want a Crazy Awesome example, there's Klein Sandman.
The most jarring example, however, has got to be a minor role he got in Gear Fighter Dendoh where he plays Ginga's overly flamboyant father who's EXTREMELY PRONE of broken English. In fact, flamboyant doesn't even begin to describe this character (though only for 1 episode, and Hayami also voiced the Big Bad, who's more in-line of his type)
The Good Girl features Jennifer Aniston soon after Friends, taking the lead role as a young woman trapped in a dreary, depressing life in a small Texas town. Her attempts to escape the crushing tedium result in terrible consequences with which she must live. Critics refer to it as Aniston's finest hour.
In A Few Good Men, doing this revived Kevin Bacon's career.
Macauley Culkin was so sick of being associated with Kevin and that goddamn cheek-slapping "AAAUGH!!!" that he decided to play a psychopathic boy who murdered his brother, shoots a dog for no reason, and tries to murder his cousin in The Good Son.
This is a plot point in S.O.B., in which an actress with a sugary-sweet reputation is asked to show her breasts in a soft-core film. The best part? The actress was played by Julie Andrews, whose actual film career had suffered after the one-two punch of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music typecast her. This was one of several films her husband Blake Edwards directed her in that broke her out of this mold in various ways. (Others included 10 and Victor/Victoria.)
A different example of this is in the live-action Eloise movies, where she plays Nanny, a high-strung and over tired old woman who can't sing or dance. Rather a change from Maria and Mary Poppins.
Her roles in The Princess Diaries movies and Tooth Fairy seem to be a return to her roots.
Anne Hathaway similarly had to break away from such a reputation after coming to attention in films like the Princess Diaries duet, which (perhaps) coincidentally co-starred Julie Andrews. She not only pulled it off by way of Havoc and especially Brokeback Mountain, but came so far that when she hosted Saturday Night Live in October 2008, she spoofed Mary Poppins in a skit that reveals what "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" means - it's not pretty...
Rachel Getting Married, where she plays a recovering drug addict and a thorough pain in the ass, seems to be a deliberate choice "against the type" as well. She got an Oscar nomination for Best Actress out of it.
One of her latest roles is that of playing the White Queen in Tim Burton'sAlice in Wonderland remake, distributed by Disney. Her character is sort of a creepy version of her earlier innocent characters.
And now she's playing Catwoman. Let's hope she doesn't go the same way as Heath Ledger.
Although it would be cool if she won an Oscar for it.
Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone's second-to-last spaghetti western, features as its bad guy a child-murdering psychopath. The actor initially didn't want to be in the movie, due mostly to the script's muddled attempts to describe a highly visual film, but changed his mind when Mr. Leone gave him this description of his introductory scene:
The entire family lies dead except for a scared little boy with his toes pointed inward. The gang moves into view and the audience rises to see it's Henry Fonda.
An earlier marked departure from his usual type was in Fort Apache as the unsympathetic martinet Colonel Thursday.
For a Few Dollars More was itself playing against type for Van Cleef, who was notorious for playing villains in Westerns. The movie teases us by introducing his character as if he was a villain, and only revealing him as a good character about half way through; it also uses imagery from all the Westerns in which Van Cleef played a villain - having him hide his gun like his character from Gunfight At The OK Corral and have a pocket watch like in The Bravados (although for an entirely different reason).
Jamel Debbouze, a renowned French-Moroccan comedian, played a major role in French war drama Indigènes (released in the US as Days of Glory), even getting several crowners throughout the film.
In the same film, Samy Nacéri, virtually unrecognisable from his better known role in the action comedy franchise Taxi.
Mary Tyler Moore played a manipulative mother who plotted with her son to murder a rich old woman in the TV movie Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes. Also, she played a somewhat sympathetic Evil Matriarch in Ordinary People.
Also opposite one-time TV husband Dick Van Dyke in The Gin Game on PBS
To a lesser degree, his character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not a cannibal serial killer, but stealing an unconscious woman's underwear and seducing her with her own erased memories aren't the activities of a man of sterling character.
Robert Englund played both bumbling-but-harmless Willie in V and supernatural psycho Freddie Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The latter seems to have caused Englund to now be typecast as horror-film weirdos and psychos.
Rodney Dangerfield, best known as a boorish underdog who gets no respect, played a sexually abusive father in Natural Born Killers. Even though he retained much of his trademark schtick, it's still a little jarring to watch.
This could count as a twofer because Dangerfield, despite being Jewish, was portraying the head of a redneckish and vaguely Southern trailer-park family - a role that's about as goyish as you can get.
Likewise, Jackie Gleason as the redneck Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit. Gleason wasn't Jewish, but he was very New York.
Despite mainly being known for his physique and accent, Arnold has always had a gift for comedic timing (just watch Commando if you don't believe this). So starring in a comedy isn't too much of a stretch for the Austrian action film icon.
Kurt Russell doesn't appear to be Playing Against Type in Grindhouse: Death Proof until it's revealed that his character has a VERY low tolerance for any non-self-inflicted pain.
Before he became established as an action hero he was in comedies usually playing the nerdy hero or best friend.
A much clearer case of playing against the type would be in Vanilla Sky where he's... a psychiatrist?
Earlier on in Die Hard With a Vengeance, Jackson was a bespectacled locksmith who didn't know how to handle a gun, but he became progressively more badass throughout the film.
Bruce Willis has played against type on a few occasions, to the point that his "type" completely changed. Before Die Hard, Willis was a comedic actor known for his wisecracking role in Moonlighting. His appearance in such a big budget actioner was met with a great deal of initial skepticism, but its success turned him into a bona fide action star. Willis went against his new action star type with a role in Death Becomes Her, in which he played a weak-willed and neurotic doctor. As he has aged, his type has broadened to include characters from a wide range of backgrounds, from daffy to dour, weak to badass. Willis also did the same in the erotic thriller The Color of the Night, where he played a psychologist haunted by the suicide of a patient, and who has a love affair with a mysterious young girl.
It should be noted that at the time he made Die Hard, Willis' smartalecky Moonlighting persona was already considered yesterday's news, and Die Hard resurrected his career. Then the public tired of him as an action hero, and he required a second comeback, successfully transitioning into dramatic roles with Pulp Fiction.
Robert De Niro has made a career for the past ten or more years out of subverting, parodying, or deconstructing the tough-guy cred he had accumulated over a long and illustrious career. Examples include Analyze This and Stardust.
Before that era, there was always Harry Tuttle in Brazil, the quirky imaginary friend of the protagonist.
Jessica Lange, normally so sweet and honest, plays an absolutely monstrous character in Julie Taymor's version of Titus. Her equally evil and far creepier sons are played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Matthew Rhys, both of whom are normally cast as nice guys, Rhys in particular. Perhaps the greatest example of Playing Against Type in the film, however, is when Anthony Hopkins bakes both of them into a pie and doesn't eat any himself.
Don't forget than Jonathan Rhys Meyers played Henry VIII in The Tudors and Elvis Presley, winning a Golden Globe for the latter.
He also played Steerpike in Gormenghast. That's multi-layered creepy right there.
He also played a certifiable Complete Monster in Woody Allen's Match Point, a sadistic cult-leader in Octane, a cruel, bitter murderer in Alexander, a petulant Manipulative Bastard in the Lion in Winter (tv version), and a cold, selfish borderline-megalomaniac in Velvet Goldmine. Admittedly, he has played quite a variety of 'nice guy' roles also, a number of which were pretty high profile...but whether the (admittedly insane) part of Chiron can truly be considered playing against type is debatable.
Jessica Lange also took a turn as the highly controlling, dominatrix Evil Matriarch in Hush.
Christopher Walken played way against type in the musical version of the movie Hairspray, wherein he portrayed milquetoast gag peddler Wilbur Turnblad. He even did a Fred-and-Gingeresque song and dance with his loving wife, ably played by John Travolta. Ironically, Walken's dancing gained a fair amount of fame in the 90's due to SNL sketches and a Fatboy Slim video.
And let's not forget his role as Puss in the live action musical adventure "Puss in Boots" from 1988. That man can really dance!
Most people don't know he spent most of his college career as a dancer in musicals.
On the subject of I, Claudius, Lucius Sejanus, bastard extraordinaire, as played by... Captain Picard?
Captain Picard WITH HAIR!
To be fair, the Sejanus role predates Picard by a good decade.
And Patrick Stewart is a well-respected classical actor - at the time he took the role of Picard, that was seen as playing against type.
Or try Patrick Stewart as the flaaaaaaaamingly Camp Gay interior decorator Sterling in Jeffrey, which came out about a year after The Next Generation ended. He made the line "We're the Pink Panthers!" as convincing as his "I will make them PAY!!!" rant in First Contact. And he looked adorable in a pink beret and short shorts.
That wasn't even the only time, he was also a charmingly gay theatre director in Frasier who was in love with the title character himself. "Is there anything this man CAN'T do?"
A part he played memorably without actually saying anything. Now that's great acting!
There's also the time where he voiced Napoleon in the Live Action Adaptation of Animal Farm. It's... hard to imagine him as an absolutely ruthless and irredeemable dictator, to say the very least.
Jim Carrey broke through with a string of wildly over-the-top comedic characters. Even staying within his niche, he upset audience expectations with The Cable Guy by playing a humorously disturbed villain rather than a whimsical buffoon. Eventually he got Tom Hanks Syndrome and went after critical respect with a number of serio-comic roles such as The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The recent Robert Zemeckis adaptation of A Christmas Carol does a great job of highlighting both Carrey's comedic and dramatic strong points. While the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present are a bit Narmy, Carrey actually takes Scrooge very seriously, and it doesn't come off as a caricature. Scrooge comes off as Dickens intended: a stingy curmudgeon.
And don't forget the somewhat less recent film The Number 23. In that, he plays a guy (a dad, no less) that is actually a psychotic killer who wrote a book about himself being obsessed with the number 23. It was refreshingly not funny at all.
In the original Evil Dead, Bruce Campbell's character is a Final Guy who screams a lot and spends most of screen time getting caught under bookcases. Ironically, it's the same character that took over his career, meaning that he ended up typecast as a character who started out as the exact opposite of his normal reputation.
Prior to Airplane!, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, and Peter Graves were well-known as serious dramatic actors. Leslie Nielsen's entire career since then was a parody of his former rep. Lloyd Bridges later appeared in both Hot Shots comedies.
Speaking of Airplane!, don't forget Barbara "June Cleaver" Billingsley as the jive talking old lady.
A double example in Leslie Nielsen: he played the darkly humorous villain Richard in the "Something To Tide Your Over" segment of the horror movie Creepshow. It's one of the only roles as a villain Nielsen's ever played.
When Tim Burton cast Michael Keaton as Batman, audiences were dubious because Keaton was best known for his comedic roles. Burton already had a working relationship with Keaton and thought he would fit as the somewhat out-of-sync and antisociable Bruce Wayne that the script called for. Since that time, Keaton has played other menacing and even villainous characters.
When Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker in The Dark Knight, he was best known for playing hunky, romantic characters in films such as 10 Things I Hate About You, A Knight's Tale, and Casanova. Even his dramatic breakout role as a hunky, closeted gay rancher in Brokeback Mountain didn't stray all that far from his niche. Audiences had no idea what to expect from Ledger playing a hideousMonster Clown. And both the gay rancher and monster clown provided the page image.
Gary Oldman is primarily known for playing villains of all kinds. But in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, he played the heroic Jim Gordon, Batman's sole ally among the Gotham City police.
Johnny Depp was perceived as merely a teen idol - then he played Edward Scissorhands, an almost textbook example of The Grotesque, for Tim Burton. This is regarded as the turning point of Depp's career, so much so that eccentrics are his type whenever he works with Tim Burton. Also, Anthony Michael Hall was cast against type in that film as the brutish Jim; he was best known at the time for his nerdy roles.
Jimmy Stewart was widely considered the most wholesome leading man in show business, but he subverted his type with a few roles, most by Alfred Hitchcock.
In Rear Window, the character L.B. Jefferies has bitter ideas about marriage and a touch of voyeurism in him.
He plays a Nietzsche Wannabe, albeit a rather amiable and charming one, in Rope.
Stewart's '50s Westerns, directed by Anthony Mann, generally cast him as a tough, hard-bitten loner.
In Anatomy of a Murder, he plays a lawyer, who is likable enough, but there is an unsettling scene where he meets his client in jail, tells him that he has no defense other than insanity, and then leaves him alone to think about "how crazy he was."
His George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life starts out as a typical nice-guy role, then gradually morphs into an embittered, desperate near-suicide before snapping back for the happy ending.
One of his early roles was in After The Thin Man, in which he seems to be a typical Stewart character, but at the end is revealed to be a psychotic scheming murderer.
Cary Grant as the villain in Hitchcock's Suspicion.
Or Grant, known for roles in romantic comedies, being cast also by Hitchcock in espionage thrillers like Notorious and North By Northwest.
Karen in From Here to Eternity is a brokenhearted unfaithful wife with relationship issues who engages in a rather torrid embrace on a beach. She's played by Deborah Kerr of The King and I and An Affair to Remember.
In that same movie, the prostitute girlfriend of Montgomery Clift who ends up delusional is played by none other than Donna Reed. Yes, that Donna Reed.
Streep has also played more comedic roles as of late, including Queen Bitch Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada and hamming it up as Julia Child in Julie and Julia.
You remember Kate Capshaw? That annoying Distressed Damsel from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom who was always screaming and getting into trouble and needed Indy to get her out. Among her lesser known roles is a 1987 made-for-tv film called The Quick and the Dead (nothing to do with the Sam Raimi film) where she actually plays a strong-willed, independent woman who becomes an Action Girl by the end.
Sean Connery is best known for playing Bad Ass characters with a lot of grit to them. In Indiana Jones And the Last Crusade, however, he plays Indiana's father as a bumbling, academic pacifist who survives with creativity rather than action skills.
Tony Curtis became famous with heroic roles. At the preview screening of Sweet Smell of Success, his fans were pretty disappointed at him playing a skeevy press agent.
He plays the title role in The Boston Strangler a decade later!
He also had a notorious reputation for starring in comedies, which didn't stop him from having a major supporting role in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus.
Before M, Peter Lorre was best known for his comedic roles. That must have been a jarring transition.
While speaking about his career, Lorre once noted that he filmed a comedy around the time of M (he may have specifically mentioned Die Koffer des Herrn O.F.), and that M just happened to be released first. He speculated that, had the release dates been reversed, he would have had a career as a comedian instead of a villain.
While it isn't a huge change, as the film is still pretty creepy, Vincent Price somewhat played against type in Edward Scissorhands, given that while his reputation is for Large Ham villains, in that movie he was a kindly scientist.
See also The Whales of August, where he plays a kindly (if mooching) old man and love interest to Lillian Gish.
After House of Wax established Price as That Guy Who Plays Villains, this was subverted in two William Castle movies (House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler) where Price is set up as the obvious villain, only for the real baddie to be revealed as someone else in the final act, and suddenly, Vincent is the hero.
A borderline example would be Witchfinder General; although Price plays yet another villain in this movie, his character is a Complete Monster, rather than the Large HamMagnificent Bastard he usually plays.
Compare Allison Janney's role as the press secretary on The West Wing with her role as a nail stylist in Juno. It makes it about 20 times funnier. The West Wing would probably be the time she's playing against type, as she's been in many comedies like Drop Dead Gorgeous and Private Parts.
Seth Rogen got known playing wise-cracking characters who are often stoners. In Donnie Darko, however, he plays the school bully (though this was before his type was established), and in Observe and Report he plays a darkly unbalanced, bi-polar security guard. He is also The Green Hornet.
And in Pineapple Express, while Rogen still plays a stoner, James Franco winds up as a bigger stoner than him.
Pretty much the career of Anthony Perkins. Prior to Psycho he was known for playing sensitive young men and was an almost teen idol. After Psycho, him not playing a creepy psychopath was considered him playing against type.
Like a nerdy scientist in Disney's The Black Hole. He gets eviscerated in a surprisingly horrific scene.
Post-Psycho Perkins playing Inspector Javert of all people and stealing the whole movie.
Between Swingers and Made, Vince Vaughn dabbled in dramatic works such as The Cell and villainous creepy roles such as the evil stepfather in Domestic Disturbance and the role of Norman Bates himself in the 1998 Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho. During the phase, Roger Ebert once said of Vaughn, "[He] plays a creep better than just about anybody else."
James Cromwell, the go-to guy for militant, ball-busting characters (he's the tall, intimidating evil exec of any movie that needs it), can soften up on occasion, from his signature role as the stern but human farmer in Babe to the eccentric, rock-and-roll loving scientist in Star Trek: First Contact.
Armand Assante in Fatal Instinct. Normally he plays serious, even grim characters. In this comedy spoof he played his role absolutely straight and was hilarious.
Clooney heavily bearded, overweight, and tired in Syriana.
Sylvester Stallone's attempted forays into comedy with Rhinestone, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!, and Oscar. He also made a stab at acting credibility by playing an overweight and schlubby loser in Cop Land, which went a lot better than his comedy work.
Mex Urtizberea was cast in the deadly serious movie Valentin after doing comedy for years in the sketch show Magazine For Fai.
After doing nothing but comedy for his entire career, Alfredo Casero starred in the drama Todas Las Azafatas Van al Cielo.
Will Ferrell has built his career on playing buffoonish or Jerkass comedy characters. But then he made a surprisingly emotional turn as a mild-mannered accountant in Stranger Than Fiction.
Elf is a bit of a playing-against-type role for him, too; while he's still a bit of a buffoon in there, it's more "good-natured but exuberant Adult Child" instead of "lecherous jerkass."
Speaking of Elf, you can make a case for tough-guy James Caan playing the straight man father figure to Will Ferrell's man-elf, his deadpan delivery leading to some laughs as well.
Batman Begins had Liam Neeson, usually cast as the noble hero, as the baddie, and Gary Oldman, usually cast as the villain (or at least violently conflicted anti-hero) as one of the few good guys left in Gotham.
Gary Oldman in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where he is very much a subversion of himself. In the first act, he is set up to be the villainous Gary Oldman we all know, but not when we see him.
Tim Roth interestingly subverted his "type" by playing a clever ex-con... in the fluffy Woody Allen musical Everyone Says I Love You.
Also, there's Tim Roth's comic turn in Four Rooms.
Bradley Cooper, best known for nice guy roles like Will Tippin from Alias, plays one of the most despicable Romantic False Leads in romantic comedy history in Wedding Crashers. It seems like he's decided that it's his new type. He didn't exactly play sympathetic characters in He's Just Not That Into You or The Hangover. And he plays the obsessive, borderline-psychotic protagonist in the (pretty good) horror film The Midnight Meat Train.
Dustin Hoffman's career and reputation as one of the supreme American actors began when he shed his image as the innocent Benjamin in The Graduate and played the disreputable Ratso in Midnight Cowboy.
John Candy did a few serious roles, like the sleasy lawyer Dean Andrews in JFK.
Josh Peck has done this recently in The Wackness.
In an earlier role Mean Creek he played a cruel, foul mouthed bully; before this he was usually the comic relief.
Donald Pleasence, typically cast as slimy villains, reinvented himself as the heroic Dr. Loomis in Halloween. Interestingly, John Carpenter's original choice for the role was the equally villain typecast Christopher Lee, and Rob Zombie's remake did the same thing by casting Malcolm Mcdowell in the role.
Pleasance was quick to point out, however, the role of Loomis re-typecast him. Whereas people had previously seen him only as a villain, he remarked that after the first two Halloween films, he found himself being cast solely as rescuers.
Pleasance also played the overweight, incompetent President of the United States in another John Carpenter film, Escape from New York.
While he's never come out and given this as the exact reason, Christopher Lee has gone on the record as saying that one of the few regrets he has about his career was turning down the role of Dr. Loomis. Probably because it would help him shake off the villainous reputation he's picked up (mostly for his endless Dracula movies and The Wicker Man, and revived by The Lord of the Rings.) Lee gets to play a character with a sensitive side in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and in the biopic Jinnah (where he plays Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of modern Pakistan) but... that's really about it. (Though he's a flat-out good guy in The Devil Rides Out).
Done for comedy/irony in Trick Or Treat, a horror movie based around the moral panic over Satanic messages in rock and roll records. Gene Simmons plays the school DJ, while a very subdued Ozzy Osbourne is a moralizing, anti-rock fundamentalist.
Peter Cushing, also considered for the role of Dr. Loomis in Halloween, would not have been against type, as he was best known for playing Dr. Van Helsing in the Hammer HorrorDracula movies. However, he played an extremely evil version of the title character in Hammer's Frankenstein movies (with the exception of the ironically named Evil of Frankenstein, where he's the hero). And 21st Century audiences might know him best for blowing up Alderaan.
Danny DeVito is usually cast as Jerkass or Jerk with a Heart of Gold characters, so seeing him play Andy Kaufman's friendly, grounded-in-reality agent George Shapiro in Man on the Moon is an interesting change of pace. In the same film, Vincent Schiavelli (best known for oddball-if-not-creepy roles such as the Subway Ghost in Ghost) appears as an uptight ABC executive, and Andy's sharp-but-down-to-earth girlfriend Lynne Margulies is played by Courtney Love.
Elizabeth Berkley, fresh off of Saved by the Bell, tried to go radically against type in Showgirls. It was widely considered a poor choice at the time.
It still is. Showgirls completely derailed her film career before it could even start.
Throughout the Spanish-speaking world, Sergi Lopez was largely known as a family friendly, comedies-and-melodramas kind of a guy. In Dirty Pretty Things, however, he plays the villain, an organ-smuggler who preys on desperate immigrants. When Guillermo Del Toro was casting Pan's Labyrinth, producers worried that Lopez wouldn't work as the Complete Monster antagonist, Captain Vidal. Ironically, the English-speaking world is probably most familiar with these two roles and Vidal is now consistently cited as one of the more despicable characters in recent cinema.
His turn toward villainous roles started with the title role in the French film Harry - He's Here to Help. Let's just say that Harry's advice for the protagonist takes a sinister turn.
Gregory Peck, known for playing noble and dignified characters (such as Atticus Finch) played Josef Mengele in the 1978 film The Boys from Brazil. One of many theories given for the film's failure at the box office was that the public simply refused to see Gregory Peck as a villain. Peck, for his part, took the part just so he'd have the change to work with Laurence Olivier.
Dean Jones plays the cruel, selfish veterinarian in Beethoven (one critic notes that in his Disney heyday, Jones would've been the sympathetic family man lead - as was the case in the animated TV series, where he voiced dad George*
played by Charles Grodin in the movie
).
Double playing against type in 3:10 to Yuma (1957): Glenn Ford, usually cast as a nice guy, plays a villain, and Van Heflin, in his career playing mostly villains, is the good guy.
The remake is also an example, as it has Russel Crowe (best known for playing big square heroes in movies like Gladiator and Master and Commander) as a Magnificent Bastard villain.
Jan Malmsjö as Bishop Vergerus in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. If IMDB is anything to go by, in his native Sweden he had been known up to this point only as a song-and-dance man, while Bishop Vergerus is... anything but.
Adam West's first post-Batman role was as nightclub owner and retired assassin Johnny Cain in The Girl Who Knew Too Much. West intentionally took the role in hopes that it would erode his Type Casting. Of course, we all know how well that worked.
Can you say "Samantha Stephens took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks?" Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery played the title character of an ABC movie titled The Legend of Lizzie Borden.
John Goodman can usually be counted on to be playing a jolly, avuncular portly character. The exception is when The Coen Brothers are on the other side of the camera, in which case he is rather more...well...violent.
Goodman also played a quite intimidating criminal in Death Sentence.
Not to mention his role in The West Wing, where he played the tough negotiating leader of the Republican Party.
Goodman also played a burly biker in The Simpsons episode "Take my Wife, Sleaze."
Similarly, it's jarring to see George Wendt as a frighteningly brutal heavy in King of the Ants.
Done three times in Double Indemnity. Fred MacMurray, these days best known as family man Steve Douglas, plays a glib murderer. Edward G. Robinson, usually either a villain or anti-hero, plays a fatherly Jerk with a Heart of Gold. And Barbara Stanwyck, who usually played the sweet but plucky heroine in romantic comedies, starts the film as if she might be reprising that role here as Phyllis Dietrichson. She's not. She's reallynot.
Another MacMurray example is The Apartment, where he plays Jack Lemmon's cheating, corrupt douchebag of a boss.
Alan Rickman played against type in his 1990 romantic comedy Truly, Madly, Deeply, in which plays the ghost of the lead character's boyfriend. He also plays a saintly romantic hero in Sense and Sensibility. In most of Rickman's other roles, he plays dour, stodgy, or villainous characters. Or dour, stodgy, villainous characters.
For Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1941, Ingrid Bergman was supposed to play the sweet girl and Lana Turner the bad girl, but Bergman was tired of playing sweet girls and requested a switch.
Swedish actor/director Hasse Alfredson, mostly known as a comedian with improvised monologues as his forte, played viciously against type in The Simple-Minded Murderer (which he also directed), where he's a cruel sociopathic Nazi sympathizer.
Jean-Claude Van Damme plays against type as himself in JCVD.
He did one better in Replicant, playing both his usual ass-kicking character (a serial killer in this case) and an innocent, child-like clone of same. And there was much Ho Yay.
Swedish actor Peter Haber is probably most well known for playing the grizzled, but noble detective Martin Beck. So it come as a huge surprise when he played Complete Monster Martin Vanger in ''Men Who Hate Women'' (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).
To the Swedish audience, however, he was very well known long before playing Beck as the clumsy family father Rudolf in the Christmas comedy series Sunes jul.
Freeman got his first Oscar nomination for playing a nasty, violent pimp in 1987's Street Smart, a role that must come as a surprise for audiences who had previously known him mainly for his role as Easy Reader on The Electric Company.
Despite early success with Saturday Night Fever, Travolta never really moved out from under the shadow of his Vinny Barbarino character, and so failed to establish a film career until he was cast as a hitman in Pulp Fiction.
Sir Alec Guinness in an over-the-top comedy role as the blind butler in Murder by Death would surprise anyone only familiar with his work in the epics of David Lean and/or the Star Wars films. But in fact, he was once best known as one of England's great comic actors, with such highlights as his epic eight roles in the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (from kindly vicar to insolent old woman) and the gang leader in the original version of The Ladykillers.
Before his iconic role as Private Detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Humphrey Bogart had mainly been playing either psychotic or cowardly villains. Casting him as a romantic lead character in Casablanca (1942) was also considered an unusual choice by studio excecs (An incredulous Jack Warner: "Who'd want to kiss Bogart?" Ingrid Bergman: "I would!")
He also went against his hard-boiled, cynic, cool persona in Sabrina, playing an awkward, withdrawn workaholic.
And again in The Caine Mutiny, playing an experienced but unstable martinet of a naval officer who slowly goes to pieces.
The 2009 Star Trek film featured several examples:
Eric Bana, who got his start in Australia as a comedian and went on to play hunky hero types in Hollywood, plays the Big Bad.
Watch Chopper, seriously Eric Bana can play f*** ed-up.
Tom Cruise has a fairly tight niche playing powerful, self-confident men with varying levels of Jerk Ass. He surprised some audiences by playing a straight villain in Collateral, though he had already played a villain in Interview with the Vampire. Cruise's role as the fat villain Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder also surprised people, as it was a rare venture into comedy. Also, there's his role in Magnolia, which, depending how you see him, could be seen as a form of Adam Westing.
The movie Precious, based on the novel Push, has Mo'Nique as the title character's abusive mother, which is very much against type for her. She is usually the Sassy Black Woman in comedies.
Mariah Carey also plays against type in the film. See the glamorous diva◊ play an unglamoroussocial worker◊. Hell, her acting is way better compared to Glitter.
The thriller The Watcher criss-crossed actor types by casting James Spader as the cop and Keanu Reeves as the serial killer. In the same year, Reeves also played an abusive redneck boyfriend in The Gift. Spader has played a number of sympathetic characters, though he was known for his creep roles at the time.
Spader also had this back in 1990 when Bad Influence cast the normally (even then) Jerk Ass Spader as a nice guy and Rob Lowe (!) as the villain.
Andy Griffith, best known as either kindly small-town sheriff Andy Taylor or no-nonsense defense attorney Ben Matlock, got his first big acting break as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a superficially charming con man drunk with power in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd. Griffith became so engrossed in the role that he started incorporating his character's mannerisms into his everyday life, and became so disgusted with himself that he refused to play villains ever again. He broke this streak in the late 1980s, playing a heartless judge who sentences an adolescent girl to hard time in federal prison in a TV movie made at the height of his Matlock fame.
Southland Tales features a few intentional invocations of the trope. Schlubby comic Jon Lovitz plays a murderous corrupt cop. Comedienne Cheri Oteri plays a butt-kicking anarchist.
Speaking of which, Kevin Costner, normally the hero, plays a psychopathic who in threatens to kill a fellow robber (David Arquette!) for suggesting that Frank Sinatra could take Elvis Presley in a fight.
Harrison Ford spends most of What Lies Beneath as Michelle Pfeiffer's concerned husband, until we discover he murdered the young girl whose ghost haunts Pfeiffer.
Ford also played an unlikeable character in Mosquito Coast, which he says was one of the reasons for the film's financial failure. He was a scientist who, while well-meaning, yells at Brendan Fraser, in Extraordinary Measures.
While not unlikeable per se, his roles in more drama/comedic or family films such as Regarding Henry and Working Girl were not the usual everyman action hero that Ford is normally cast as.
Tom "Tiny" Lister, usually typecast in his movie appearances as the Scary Black Man, made a rather decent go as the President of Earth in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.
In Lake Placid, we see Betty White (previously the sweet, ditzy Rose Nylund on Golden Girls) as Mrs. Delores Bickerman, a foul-mouthed, possibly insane local who fed her husband to a giant crocodile.
See also the Golden Girls entry below in Live Action Television.
Jesse Metcalfe played the eponymous casanova of John Tucker Must Die. He earlier played Van Mcnulty, a bigot determined to hunt down and kill everyone with superpowers, with Clark Kent marked as big game, on Smallville.
Alan Arkin often plays an Everyman or the Only Sane Man— and is absolutely terrifying as the psychotic Harry Roat in Wait Until Dark (1967).
Similar to Carrey, Adam Sandler started out playing childish buffoons, then he graduated to romantic comedies, than turned serious in Punch Drunk Love and Reign Over Me. Neither one was financially successful, so he's reverted to the middle ground between immature idiot and Kavorka Man.
Oddly enough, his role in Punch Drunk Love wasn't actually all that different from his better-known roles: man child with social issues who is awkward around women and has a bit of a violent streak. It was just that it was no longer played for laughs.
Glenn Close, the go-to actress for Magnificent Bitches, power hungry female tyrants, Manipulative Bitches and heartless villainesses in general, plays the 'nice girl' in the movie The Natural, as well as Mona Simpson in The Simpsons, who was not a magnificent bitch in any sense of the word, although she was a hippie.
George Carlin played an atypically serious role in Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl, as a grandfather who takes sick leave to care for his granddaughter that her father's been neglecting.
Rupert Grint (best known for playing Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies) admitted that he made a conscious effort to "play against type" in the Irish teen drama Cherrybomb, in which he can be seen swearing, drinking, stealing, having sex and snorting cocaine.
Beverley Mitchell, best known as the middle daughter in 7th Heaven, plays a jigsaw victim in Saw II.
Shahid Kapur, often associated to romantic movies like Jab We Met and Vivah, plays a gangster in Kaminey.
Haylie Duff, usually in teen comedy roles like her sister Hilary, played a frontier era doctor in Love Takes Wing and Love Finds A Home.
And it's not like Hilary Duff hasn't played against type herself, as anyone who's seen War, Inc. (an overlysexed Middle Eastern pop star who stuffs scorpions down her pants for fun? You never got that on Lizzie McGuire) or Greta will testify.
Gina Gershon mostly plays Manipulative Bitches, raunchy seductresses and several other villainous types. But in Ugly Betty, she plays a campy, hilariously over-the-top cosmetics mogul.
Peter Sellers never really had a type per se, but by the end of the 1970s his best-known role by far was Large HamFunny Foreigner Inspector Clouseau in the slapsticky Pink Panther series, so seeing him as the serene, subdued Chance in the satire Being There reminded a lot of audiences and critics of the true depth of his talent (and he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar).
Stand-up comedian and comic actor Dane Cook as the bitter, abrasive "Mr. Smith" trying to blackmail the title serial killer in Mr. Brooks.
Alyssa Milano wished to shed her "good girl" image from her days as Samantha from Who's the Boss?, so she played sex-crazed maniacs in Embrace of the Vampire, Poison Ivy 2: Lily, and The Outer Limits episode "Caught In The Act", as well as numerous television roles where she played very sexual characters.
Given her, shall we say, consistency in preferred roles, and the time she and her mother sued porn sites for distributing images of Alyssa not because they wanted the pictures removed, but because they wanted a cut of the profits, one could argue that she was playing against type back in her "good girl" days.
Chris Farley played the more level headed sidekick (usually reserved for David Spade) in Almost Heroes, rather than the Idiot Hero.
Ronald Reagan, who usually played the Best Friend or B-Movie Hero types, was a brutal, vicious crime kingpin in his last film, The Killers.
Halle Berry's turn as a Hollywood Homely down-on-her-luck waitress who often physically and verbally abused her overweight son won her an Oscar.
Julia Roberts' Oscar-winning turn as the trash-talking, trampy-dressing Erin Brockovich was a departure from her typical Mary Sue characters (with the possible exception of Pretty Woman's Vivian.)
Hugh Jackman as a suave, manipulative and slimy corporate type in Deception.
In that film, Hugh Jackman turns out to be the murderer.
David Suchet, who has been (and still is) playing Hercule Poirot from 1989, appeared in Executive Decision in 1996, playing the Big Bad moustacheless Muslim terrorist.
But Judge Doom was more unsympathetic and a pure evil monster with no comedic moments (a thing that you would have expected from Lloyd even when he plays a villain)- so we could definitely consider Judge Doom as Chris Lloyd's Evil Counterpart, with the capital "E".
It was still a comedic role. He played it straight in The Butterfly Effect and The Guardian.
Sean Penn whom nowadays known for being a dramatic actor in his early acting career he was known for his comedic roles most notably as Jeff Spicoli a pot smoking hippie surfer in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
At one point he was considered to be a has-been, due to a combination of inability to escape that typecasting and some personal problems.
Ciaran Hinds, a classically trained actor known for stoic or villainous characters in such films as Munich and The Sum Of All Fears.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, usually known for playing villains or tragic types, made a nice romantic turn as a limo driver in Jack Goes Boating, a film that he also directed.
Geoffrey Rush, anyone? The Oscar winner for Shine and longtime dramatic actor (to this day) outright re-defined his career as Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.
Fredric March was best known for playing light comedy and minor romantic parts when Robert Mamoulian cast him in the title roles of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1931), in which he was so terrifying that he won the first (and for sixty years only) Best Actor Oscar for a horror role.
David Arquette is associated with goofy comedic roles, but starred in the Holocaust drama The Grey Zone.
Quentin Tarantino loves to play with this trope. Examples include casting Robert De Niro as a slovenly hoodlum in Jackie Brown, and Sonny Chiba as the retired sword crafter in Kill Bill. Pam Grier said that she cracked up laughing at the filming of a courtroom scene in Jackie Brown when she saw who played the judge: Sid Haig, who had appeared in many movies with her, but always as a villain.
Comedian Chi McBride as the serious but kind FBI agent in Mercury Rising, who is the immediate superior to Bruce Willis' undercover expert.
Rob Schneider is probably better known for playing funny foreigners or one kind of Butt Monkey or another. Well, in Benchwarmers, not only is he a competent, respectable, dignified male lead, his character is an excellent baseball player with genuine depth. The film had its problems, but Rob's performance was quite a welcomed break from the norm.
Leonard Nimoy (besides playing Spock from the show Star Trek) was actually famous for voicing Galvatron, one of the most vile and despicable Decepticons that ever lived. However, he was cast as the noble and wise Autobot Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Subverted by the fact that at the end of the film, Sentinel is actually revealed to be a Decepticon.
For that matter, Patrick Dempsey. That's right. Dr. McDreamy is playing a slimeball businessman who sold out to the Decepticons in order to keep his girlfriend and get on the corporate fast track.
Anthony Hopkins, typically known for serious or villainous roles, portrayed the happy-go-lucky motorbike racer Burt Munro in The World's Fastest Indian. Hopkins was on record saying that the role of Burt Munro was one of his most enjoyable, because Munro's outlook on life was not much different to his own.
Jamie Lee Curtis did this twice. The start of her film career was playing the Final Girl in the original slasher films, then she did an about face and played a prostitute in Trading Places. The 1985 Perfect made her a sex symbol but that didn't work out so well and she switched to playing quirky housewife characters in various genres.
Don't forget that she was also the Alpha Bitch in Election, a character type that she does not seem to have played since. It would appear that her overall screen persona underwent a gradual Heel Face Turn.
Her character was absolutely NOT the Alpha Bitch, she was a frumpy, overachieving and much-maligned, manipulative and psychotic nerd.
Comedian Jackie Vernon, best known as the voice of Frosty the Snowman, played a psychotic and cannibalistic serial killer in Microwave Massacre.
Adrien Brody, best known for playing nerdy characters or appearing in dramatic roles, did action turns in the King Kong remake, Predators and The Experiment.
Roy Cheung is best known for playing psychopathic triad gangsters and other villains, such that his role as a Shaolin monk in Infernal Affairs was very much this.
Sharukh Khan: The bollywood-megastar managed to play really evil characters in Darr, Baazigar and worst of all: Anjaam, in which he scared several people shitless. Somehow he managed to glide over to the romantic-interest/hero roles, which is pretty rare because: Once a villain, always a villain.
Jackie Chan in Shinjuku Incident. When watching this movie don't expect him to pull off any of his high flying kung fu or watching him act like the comedic quirky hero he's normally seen as.
Albert Brooks, always known for playing comedic protagonists or the neurotic comic relief, played the ruthless and sinister crime lord Bernie Rose in Drive.
Sarah Paulson is generally known for her comic work, but shows up as a One-Scene Wonder in Serenity as a scientist who delivers a horrible message before being raped and eaten to death. She was deliberately cast in a dramatic role because Joss Whedon feels that comedy is the harder of the two.
Edward Norton is known mainly for his leading man roles. Yet somewhere in his filmography you find the remake of The Italian Job. Yet to be made: the main villain in The Bourne Legacy.
Ryan Seacrest played himself as a smarmy, carping, foul-mouthed narcissist in Knocked Up, in stark contrast to his likable, wholesome, nice-guy image.
Inverted with Michael Caine in Zulu. He would go on to play working class Cockney characters throughout his career and plays a snobby aristocratic officer with a posh accent in this movie — his first.
Andrew Davis, known for his action films such as Under Siege and The Fugitive as well as lesser-known action films like Ahnold's Collateral Damage, directed the family film Holes that was Shia LaBeouf's feature film debut, and was based on a childrens' book.
His brother Paul, who co-directed the first two films above with Chris, and solely directed American Dreamz and In Good Company, also directed against type with The Vampire's Assistant.
Chris's next movie, A Better Life, goes even further against type, being a serious drama about illegal immigrants struggling to survive in LA, with no well-known actors.
Stanley Kramer was a director best known for dramas regarding social issues (Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, etc.). It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World? Not so much.
David Lynch, known for directing surreal and nightmarish films, made The Straight Story: the simple and heartwarming story of an old man, who takes a cross-country trip on a tractor lawnmower to visit his brother.
James Cameron became famous with science fiction films, like Aliens and the Terminator movies. Then, he went on, and made Titanic, a romantic period piece based on real events.
Bob Clark hit it big with Porky's, and when A Christmas Story came out, many critics couldn't judge it on its own merits due to the former's lingering aftertaste.
Woody Allen, better known for comedies set in New York, directed Match Point, a thriller set in and around London. It became his most successful film in years, and he himself called it his best.
It's hardly that surprising if you pay attention to his earlier films. The first time he really did this was with Interiors; after nearly ten years of wacky comedies, he suddenly makes a dead-serious Tear Jerker.
His most recent film, Midnight In Paris, is a turn towards the fantasy genre. It turned out to be his best reviewed film in a long time.
And now a movie based on Gyakuten Saiban - also known as Ace Attorney.
Yoshiyuki Tomino is an odd case. Fans who love his darker and more serious works like Zeta Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon (which earned him the nickname "Kill 'Em All Tomino") are often shocked or put off by his lighter fare like Gundam ZZ and Xabungle. In this case, Tomino tends to let his current mood affect his writing, and his darker works were done during periods of Creator Breakdown while his lighter shows come during periods where he's doing better. Ever since 1999's ∀ Gundam he seems to have gotten completely over his darker side and acknowledges his flaws, culminating in an Alternate Continuity movie version of Zeta with a happier ending.
Jay Roach, director of the Austin Powers movies and Meet The Parents also directed the TV movie Recount, a political drama about the events of the United States presidential election in 2000.
Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Sunshine, would make a family friendly film about a child coming across a lot of money called Millions, and would also later direct the less-family-friendly but still child-oriented Slumdog Millionaire.
Ed Zwick, best known for historical war epics and the like (including Glory, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond) made his directorial debut with the romantic comedy About Last Night, and takes a break from the Oscar bait with his latest film Love and Other Drugs, a sex comedy about a Viagra salesman.
And prior to his epic film work, he was well known for producing television dramedies, most notably Sisters, thirtysomething and My So-Called Life.
Sergio Leone is probably best known for his spaghetti Westerns, several of which involved actors being cast against type. His last film was Once Upon a Time in America, a story about gangsters.
When Sergio Leone finished The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he originally wanted to direct against type by making Once Upon a Time in America, but gave into popular demand and made Once Upon a Time in the West, which was the start of a new trilogy that would end with Once Upon a Time in America.
Apparently, Sergio Leone—known for having something of a hard-on for America, or at least American history—had also planned to make a film about the siege of Leningrad during World War II. Sadly, he died before it got very far.
Roland Emmerich, best known for large-scale disaster movies such as 2012, Independence Day, and The Day After Tomorrow, tackled Anonymous, a historical mystery-thriller addressing the age-old question: "who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare"?
Kenneth Branagh, best known for directing adaptations of Shakespeare, directed Thor, a big budget special effects laden movie based on a comic book character.
Jerry Zucker is most well known for doing comedies like Airplane! and Top Secret! but he also directed the critically acclaimed drama film Ghost.
Not directing, but rather producing: Mel Brooks was a primary producer for both David Lynch's The Elephant Man and David Cronenberg's The Fly. In order to keep anyone from thinking that either of these movies was a comedy, he insisted that he be completely uncredited.
David Gordon Green was well known for making dramatic films like George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow, and Snow Angels. Then, as his father put it, he went "from the Arthouse to the Outhouse" by making raunchy comedies like Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter.
Al Franken, comedian, writer, talk radio host and U.S. senator, made an interesting turn as co-writer of the romantic drama When A Man Loves A Woman, starring Meg Ryan as an alcoholic struggling to keep her marriage together.
Leslie Dixon, usually a comedic writer for films such as the Hairspray remake, also wrote the sci-fi thriller Limitless, about a man who becomes addicted to a powerful mind drug.
Aaron McGruder, creator of the comic strip turned animated series The Boondocks, also co-wrote the non-comedic war film Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II.
No, Zoro is voiced by Gabriel Basurto and Bykuya is actually Christian Strempler. And Aloof Older Brother's aren't new to Alfredo, his most famous role was Sesshoumaru from InuYasha. ZORO is the role where he plays against type. And he nailed the role — but sadly the One Piece dub is VERY hated among Latin American fans for being based on the 4kids version of the show. Which is sad considering that, performance wise, it's actually pretty good.
If you think of it, Chris Strempler is playing against type here to a degree. His most popular roles until then were the Deadpan Snarker Cam Watanabe from Power Rangers Ninja Storm and Shiryu in the TV dub of Saint Seiya the Hades Saga.
Even more so! Ricardo Mendoza is an expert in playing The Lancer or the Number Two (either Hot Blooded or Deadpan Snarker subtypes). His role in Bleach? SOUSUKE MOTHERFUCKING AIZEN. It makes The Reveal so very weird to watch - specially because some fans were betting on him playing Renji instead.
George occasionally brought this up in his stand-up, including one of his HBO specials, when talking about the problems with kids these days. "This is Mr. Conductor talking! I know what I'm talking about!"
Ringo Starr later had played the same role. Imagine children's surprise upon discovering the Beatles and seeing Mr. Conductor with a band singing about drugs.
Let's not forget him as Professor J and Dekim Barton from the Gundam Wing dub.
Although said characters are actually in line with his regular typecasting, it's still uncanny to hear characters speaking with Ed Asner's voice in Lucio Fulci gore films.
The Italian dubber of Scar was Tullio Solenghi, a comedian who usually plays light and sympathetic roles.
Hungarian voice actor Csongor Szalai usually voices children or teen heroes. Then he ended up with Gaara.
Live Action TV
Andy Griffith, best known as either kindly small-town sheriff Andy Taylor or folksy defense attorney Ben Matlock, went years without playing villainous characters after he rose to fame on television, but broke the streak in the early 1980s when he was cast as John Wallace in Murder in Coweta County; the movie was the true story of John Wallace, a wealthy but sadistic landowner who kills one of his sharecroppers for stealing his cattle (by he and his goons beating up the hapless farmer, then pistol whipping him so hard he caused his gun to discharge), and it took a hard-nosed sheriff (Johnny Cash) to bring him to justice. A year before Matlock debuted, Griffith played Judge Julius Sullivan, a callously cruel judge who sentences two teen-aged girls to prison for a minor crime. After Matlock, Griffith returned to roles against type, playing the sociopathic JackMacGruder in the made-for-TV film Gramps; MacGruder turns even more sinister in his attempts to sexually molest his grandson, Matthew, and physically makes his true character known to anyone who stands in his way. In each of his three "bad guy" roles, Griffith retained his "small-town character" traits, making each of these roles even more memorable.
Ben Browder of Farscape fame played an Ax Crazy man on CSI: Miami who set a fire that he intended to put out to prove he was good enough to join the fire department after their psychological screenings declared him unfit. The fire gets out of control and people died. His declarations that he's "A hero" are particularly disturbing as he did put out the fire, but seems unaware that people frown on that whole murder thing.
The British show Upstairs Downstairs was loaded with actors playing against type, including Angela Baddeley, Jean Marsh, Rachel Gurney, Gordon Jackson, and Meg Wynn Owen. Angela Baddeley was so aristocratic in Real Life that her name appeared in Burke's Peerage, yet she played a servant convincingly.
Marc Warren, best known for playing a Loveable RogueWith a Heart of Gold on Hustle, stars in the TV adaptation of Hogfather as nightmarish Willy Wonka-like hitman Jonathan Teatime. And he's also played Count Dracula. Shiver. What's particularly interesting about the Hogfather role was that Warren himself thought up that presentation of Teatime and was actually hired with the expectation that he would play the character as something like a psychopathic Danny Blue.
He and his TV brother Jason Hervey also switched characterizations on an episode of Justice League, with Savage playing the angry Hawk and Hervey playing the gentler Dove.
Fred Savage also played an abusive boyfriend (stereotypically a wrestler) opposite Full House's Candice Cameron in a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
He also played a lecherous professor on Boy Meets World who harasses Topanga and tries to get Corey kicked out of college for defending her (That of course would be Corey played by Fred's real-life younger brother Ben Savage).
Speaking of the Law & Order franchise, Fred Savage isn't the only one doing that trick. If we go to SVU, Melissa Joan Hart played a teacher raped by her student and Jerry Lewis played Detective John Munch's mentally impaired uncle Andy. And in the original, Chevy Chase played an anti-Semitic Manipulative Bastard who made his son kill a Jewish woman he had a grudge against.
Don't forget Dean Cain. To see Superman playing a serial rapist...Brrrr.
Also Stephen Colbert as the killer in an episode of L&O: Criminal Intent, as well as Whoopi Goldberg as a "Ma Barker" type gangleader, and Michael York as a metrosexual Charles Manson! Even Julia Roberts got to play a killer in Law & Order once (she took the part because she was dating Benjamin Bratt at the time). The Law & Order franchise is arguably the best place for established "good guy" actors to show that they can play villains.
Try and unhear The Fonz sneering "shut up, you stupid bitch" after being revealed to have plotted his wife's assault.
Adorable child actor Elle Fanning also played the part of an abused child who turned out to be a sociopathic liar and wound up setting one of the detectives' apartments on fire so they could stay together forever. It was very creepy.
Dakota (Elle's older sister) played an abused child with an entirely different twist in Series.CSI: she was the product of incestuous rape, and her mother/"sister" had the rest of the family killed when her father in both senses of the word turned his attention to her.
In the same vein, notoriously sweet, good-girl actress Hilary Duff (best known as Lizzie McGuire, and for being as nice IRL as she is in most of her roles) played a neglectful, hard-partying teen mother in an episode of SVU.
On Criminal Intent, Neil Patrick Harris played a serial killer who ate part of his victims.
And a cynical pediatrician on Scrubs, as well as oddball mutant Freakshow in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and another oddball KKK leader in the sequel.
Let us not forget the role he was best known for before he played Stabler: Depraved Bisexual Chris Keller on Oz. Not only does he treat Murder the Hypotenuse as a commandment regarding his lover, Beecher, he broke Beecher's arms and legs because Beecher had rejected him.
Arguably, his dramatic roles are the initial Playing Against Type for him, as through his initial stages of acting, his background was actually in comedy.
Let's not forget the original Playing Against Type actor that Law & Order exhibited: The late, great Jerry Orbach. Taking a Musical Theatre star and turning him into a jaded, snarkyLawful Neutral detective was a brilliant masterstroke, and he stayed attached to the show until his untimely death.
Orbach had played a very similar character to Briscoe in the 1981 film Prince Of The City. Right before L&O, he played a sinister Mob type in Crimes And Misdemeanors.
A currently active one: Anthony Anderson's Kevin Bernard. Last longest role was as Complete Monster Antwon Mitchell on The Shield.
Mitchell was also very much against type for Anderson, prior to that, he was known as the go-to Black Best Friend or Comic Relief.
Whoopi Goldberg, mentioned above, also played against her own sassy black woman stereotype when she played the immortal free-spirited bartender Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Speaking of TNG, you owe it to yourself to watch the episode of Extras with Patrick Stewart. He's got some wonderful ideas for a screenplay.
And Dwight Schultz as the timid engineer Barclay, a few years after playing the clinically insane "Howling Mad" Murdock on The A-Team.
Andrew Sachs, known to most as the clumsy waiter Manuel of Fawlty Towers, played as a twitchy crafty paedophile in The Bill.
Pauline Quirke, known for her comedic fat lady role in Birds of a Feather, literally turned heads in her role as a serial killer in a crime drama called The Sculptress.
Christopher McDonald who always plays smarmy, Jerkass characters showed up in Stargate Universe, in a row everyone expected to be a smarmy, Jerkass self interested Senator as quite a few politicians have been before him in the franchise. Then he turns out to be smart and noble and ends up performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save the crew.
Bob Saget, best known as playing Danny Tanner on Full House and serving as the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos, was and still is an incredibly vulgar stand-up comedian. He once stated in an interview he took the "clean" jobs because he needed the money for his family.
So does he need the money again, now that he's the narrator in How I Met Your Mother?
He also seemed to enjoy the dissonance and shock value that comes from people who only know his "wholesome" work discovering his stand-up comedy.
Phil Silvers, famous for playing fast-talking swindlers, appears in an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalkers as a Jewish retiree scraping by on his pension in a decaying neighborhood. He's a thousand miles away from Sergeant Bilko and also completely convincing.
Lost has Dominic Monaghan of The Lord of the Rings fame playing Mancunian failed rock-star heroin addict Charlie Pace. Though as the show progressed and he kicked the junk, he seemed to revert to a lovable (albeit taller) hobbit.
Another example from Lost is Yunjin Kim, who gained fame in Korea playing Action Girls, but her character in Lost, Sun, is pretty much The Woobie.
Prior to The Golden Girls, Betty White had played raunchy Sue Ann on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, while Rue McClanahan had played The Ditz on Maude. Thus Betty was originally considered for Blanche and Rue was considered for Rose. Neither actress wanted to play such a similar role, so they suggested the switch. As a result, younger viewers are astonished to see their prior series.
Betty White probably shocks a lot of people with her dirty mouth when she appears in skits on the The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
...as her former one-time MTM "rival" Cloris Leachman did on Dancing with the Stars and the roast of Bob Saget.
White's career has cycled through types a few times. The role of Sue Ann itself was playing against the type she'd established in various programs in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, having reestablished herself as the super-nice one on Golden Girls, she's spent the 1990s and 00s playing against it: for example, in her guest appearance in Everwood, where her character was slightly racist; or on Boston Legal, where she killed a man; or on Ugly Betty, where she played herself as a manipulative gambling addict ("All that Golden Girls money went right down the nickel slots!"), or Kitty's Jerk Ass mother in That '70s Show.
One of the drawing points of the film Lake Placid was the chance to see Betty White play a foul-mouthed role.
Criminal Minds enjoys casting former child and teen stars as crazed killers. James Van Der Beek (as a multiple personality stricken home invasion murderer) and Frankie Muniz (as an insane comic book artist turned gang member butcher) appeared in the second and third seasons, respectively. In the fourth season, Luke Perry and Wil Wheaton appeared as unsubs. As one cast member joked:
Matthew Gray Gubler(Spencer Reid): I'm always getting held hostage by teen idols - first James Van Der Beek was a guest star and held Reid hostage, and this time it's Luke Perry. I actually saw Scott Baio out front, and I swear he looked at me.
Comedic actors are not immune, either: Jamie Kennedy played a cannibalistic serial killer in the third season episode "Lucky", and George Costanza (Jason Alexander) played a mastermind manipulator in the fourth season episode, "Masterpiece".
Alexander also played against type with a surprisingly low-key turn as an ice-cold, utterly amoral supergenius on Star Trek: Voyager.
At the height of Seinfeld, Alexander went way against type as a charming, charismatic mentalist on Remember WENN, written by his longtime friend Rupert Holmes.
The pilot episode features DJ Qualls as one half of a serial killing partnership. Qualls had, to that point, mostly been known for playing awkward comic relief characters.
Jackson Rathbone played a janitor suspected of murdering a number of young men and the janitor's female split personality who was the actual killer. He was absolutely brilliant. It almost makes you cry when you see what he was reduced to in Twilight.
Try picturing Gideon delivering that immortal line: "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." This troper never even realised it was the same actor.
Criminal Minds just had French Stewart as a serial killer. Bad Gadget!! Bad, bad Gadget!
Mitch Pileggi as the shotgun-wielding remorse killer in "Normal". No, not Skinner!
Except for the occasional transsexual ex-NFL player in the The World According to Garp) or excitable airplane passenger (as originally played by William Shatner) in Twilight Zone: The Movie, and a comedic role in Harry and the Hendersons.
And then a serious psychopathic villain in Dexter.
After playing a sugary-sweet, innocent maternal character in La Ninera, Florencia Pena played the greedy, dysfunctional, politically incorrect mother in Casados Con Hijos. Guillermo Francella, whose roles as fathers are always of the Greg Brady type, was cast as the drunken, idiotic and also greedy and dysfunctional father.
The same happened in the Chilean version of Casado con Hijos. Javiera Contador plays the mother, and she actually was known as The Ingenue heroine in several telenovelas...
Another Chilean case in the 80's. Deceased lead actor Tennyson Ferrada was typecast as sweet and gentle grandpa-type mentors, but then La Última Cruz (The Last Cross) came... and he played the Magnificent BastardBig Bad patriarch.
Dianne Wiest, more usually known as the sweet, motherly type (for just a few among many examples, consider: the preacher John Lithgow's wife in Footloose, the mother in The Lost Boys, and conservative senator Gene Hackman's wife in The Birdcage), instead gets to appear as the wonderfully menacing, insane, and monstrous Evil Queen in The 10th Kingdom. As she put it herself in the behind-the-scenes featurette, "It's quite delicious really. I get to kill anybody who gets in my way, so you'd better stay away from me. Otherwise you might end up dead."
She also then appeared as the hard-bitten D.A. in charge of Sam Waterson's prosecutor's office on Law & Order.
Michael Kostroff built his career with film after film where he played a heroic crusading lawyer. Then comes The Wire where he played Maurice Levy, Baltimore's go-to attorney for drug dealers and one of the most vile and unlikable characters in a show that deals almost exclusively with Black and Grey Morality.
Michael Shanks' main role for the past decade or so has been the nerdy, courageous archeologist Daniel Jackson, in Stargate SG-1. Then you've got Burn Notice, where he's cast as Victor, a psychotic, amoral super-scary spy, who has it in for the protagonist. It's great to watch.
Before that, he played the part of a psychopathic date rapist stalker in Judicial Indiscretions, in which he is definitely not redeemed at the end, though he is (sort of) in Burn Notice.
He was also a spy in 24, and a criminal in Eureka who nearly destroyed the entire town through his arrogance. And let's not forget his role as the sociopathic Balance of Judgement and his insane avatars in Andromeda.
While still a heroic character, his role as Carter Hall/Hawkman on Smallville is nearly the complete opposite of Daniel Jackson in terms of personality.
Done to a large extent in Roots, which largely cast actors known for positive, wholesome roles as its nastier characters, including Robert Reed, Ralph Waite, Lorne Greene, Burl Ives, Sandy Duncan, and Chuck Conners. It also went the other way by casting Ed Asner, best known as the gruff, surly Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as a slave ship captain who is conflicted and tortured about his trade.
Wil Wheaton did this on not one but two CBS shows in the 2007/08 season, guest starring as a selfish comic book creator (who shoulders a cosplaying Klingon out of his way) in an episode of NUMB3RS and as the aforementioned baddie of the week in Criminal Minds. A few years earlier, he played a crazy homeless guy on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Not to mention a (more comedic) douchebag version of himself on The Big Bang Theory to the point where he is now Sheldon's arch nemesis.
Eric Peterson, famous for the series Street Legal, spent most of his career playing wise, smarter characters. Contrast his role as the cranky, short tempered, yelling at butterflies Oscar Leroy on Corner Gas
Similar to the Fred Savage example above, Alan Tudyk (who is probably best remembered as the adorable pilot Wash, from Firefly), played a child molester on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Contrast his role as Doc in 3:10 to Yuma with his appearance on Dollhouse. Dude's got range.
As mentioned above, Dollhouse averted this trope with Alan Tudyk. Tudyk's first appearance on Dollhouse was as a stoner architect not unlike Wash. It turned out to be Playing Against Type after all, though, because he was actually the Joker-esque psycho Alpha.
Also playing against type was Summer Glau, playing Bennett. While she had previous roles that solidified her as the Trope Codifier for small, badass women, Bennett was distinctly meek and un-badass. Of course, she still played up otheraspectsof Summer's previous characters.
Hugh Laurie was known in England for his comedy, particularly his cheerfully stupid roles in Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster. Then he adopted an American accent to play a cynical, near-Heroic Sociopath genius in the American drama House. Thanks to the different accents, some people still can't quite accept Bertie Wooster and House as the same actor. It was also lampshaded in some of the FOX promos for the series, when the announcer announces Hugh Laurie's name, he then says derisively "You idiot!" before announcing that he's the star lead of House.
He played a cynic in Sense and Sensibility. The character is very similar to his House character, but is actually a decent person. And he doesn't have an American accent, obviously.
Don't forget that he also played an extremely loud-mouthed and scary IAD officer in dirty cop drama Street Kings.
The Shield is famous for its resurrection of Michael Chiklis's career, let alone allowing him to pretty much escape being typecast as the "stern, but lovable father figure" after his previous long-running series The Commish. It also re-energized the career of comedic actor Anthony Anderson, whose tenure on the show as ruthless Machiavellian drug kingpin helped open up new acting opportunities for him, ultimately culminating in him landing a main character role on Law and Order.
Michael Chiklis now stars in No Ordinary Family where he plays a nice guy once again. However, instead of a tough cop he now plays an insecure part time police sketch artist and it is the wife who is the successful scientist and breadwinner.
The Commish also to a point, as before that he was best known for his portrayal of John Belushi in Wired, the ill-conceived bio of his life. In fact, many industry insiders considered his career over before it really started because of that movie.
An in-show example of this occurs in the Christmas Special of The Worst Witch where nasty, scary and mean Miss Hardbroom is cast as the kind and benevolent Fairy Godmother in the pantomime of Cinderella.
An example could be made of William Hartnell when he took on the role of Doctor Who in 1963, after decades of playing "Hard Men" and Barking Sergeant Majors.
Also Christopher Eccleston, better known at the time for his roles in serious dramas.
Jon Pertwee was mostly known for ''Goons-esque comedy roles before being cast as the suave Gentleman Adventurer-style Third Doctor.
Catherine Tate was well known for being a catchphrase driven comic (which is played pretty straight in her previous appearance in the Christmas special)- she surprised everyone by pulling off a serious role in the fourth series
Rik Mayall, known in the UK for his insane and violent roles in The Young Ones and Bottom, as well as The Comic Strip Presents and other similar shows, did a non-comedic and largely straight performance as a police detective in an episode of Jonathan Creek, the first acting role he took after a serious head injury. He is also the narrator of a children's show called Jellikins / Jellabies, which is a show aimed at 2-6 year olds.
Jenna Leigh Green is best remembered for playing a certain cheerleader on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. However, in the Cold Case episode "Wednesday's Women", Green plays the younger version of an undercover schoolteacher who taught African-Americans kids in the Jim Crow-era South who feels guilty in recruiting her best friend who ends getting murdered after they're found out.
A memorable episode of ER had comedian Bob Newhart in a very unfunny role as an architect who is losing his sight and contemplating suicide.
Atsuko Tanaka is mostly a seiyuu known for her deep voice, which goes along great with professional Badass ladies with no-nonsense personality (eg: Major Motoko Kusanagi). Her deep alluring voice is also sometimes used for villainess roles. But, in Juken Sentai Gekiranger, she voiced the penguin-sensei Michelle Peng, who, while a professional in her own way, is very peppy and has a very high-pitched voice, you REALLY won't recognize her right off bat.
Character actor Kenneth MacDonald, best known for playing smooth villains in Three Stooges shorts and B westerns, had a recurring role as a judge on Perry Mason.
After decades of being mostly known for his role as the Enterprise's resident Butt Monkey on Star Trek, I'm sure it was a relief for Walter Koenig to portray Magnificent Bastard Al Bester on Babylon 5.
Dick Van Dyke, who usually plays the comic relief in musicals like Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as well as ad exec Dick Burgess on The Dick Van Dyke Show, played the Murderer of the Week (a henpecked photographer who shoots his wife and the man he hired to make it look like a murder/suicide) on an episode of Columbo.
Call Me Fitz is pretty much a perfect example of this.
For five years, Michael C. Hall played the timid but well-meaning and likable David Fisher on Six Feet Under. After it ended in 2005, he returned a year later as the cunning, monstrous, and sociopathic title character on Dexter.
Do you mean well-meaning and likable cunning monstrous sociopath?
Further examples include Comic actor John Lithgow best known for 3rd Rock From The Sun as the ultra Disturbing Trinity Killer in Season Four and Jimmy Smits, known for playing noble Heroes on NYPD Blue and The West Wing as the increasingly unstable Partner in crime Miguel Prado in Season Three.
The short lived 1991 series, Good and Evil, had this trope as its selling point. Created by Susan Harris, the woman behind Soap, Benson, The Golden Girls and others, it was a soap opera spoof telling the story of two sisters, one good and one evil, and their families. The sisters were played by Teri Garr, known for her ditzy girl-next door roles, and Margaret Whitten, best known for her bitchy roles. Naturally, Garr played the bad girl, and Whitten the good girl.
Sharon Small in the TV movie No Child of Mine. She is most famous for sympathetic, genuinely good-hearted characters like Barbara Havers on The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Trudi Malloy on Mistresses, and is absolutely adorable. In No Child Of Mine, however, she plays a pathologically, violently abusive mother, and does it so convincingly that the result can be quite literally nauseating.
Before playing Supernatural's Castiel, Misha Collins mostly played creepy guys (the serial rapist/murderer in Karla) or Russians ("Vlad" in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) or creepy Russians (Alexis Drazen in 24). He probably only auditioned for Castiel because the part was advertised as a demon, rather than an angel.
The humorless, uptight, conservative, virginal Cas is basically the opposite of Misha himself in every way. He has confirmed that the wildly altered future version of Castiel seen in the fifth-season episode "The End" is disturbingly similar to his real-life personality, noting that he enjoyed preparing for the orgy scenes.
Bill Engvall is mostly known for comedy (he's the "Here's Your Sign" guy). He plays Det. Jimmy Dupree in HawthoRNepretty damn vicious, using tactics that would probably get an actual detective reprimanded at least.
In Shining Time Station, the second Mr. Conductor is played by George Carlin. Mr. Conductor is a genuinely kind, supportive, and upbeat character, very different from Carlin's famous stage personality. In this case, George wanted to play against type very much, and this show gave him the opportunity.
Poets can do this too, and have been doing this long before typecasting was patented. Remember Edgar Allan Poe? The guy who wrote dark poems like "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee"? He also once wrote A Valentine.
And then there's ee cummings, who usually wrote poems with a gentle tone, writing something like this.
So you think Shel Silverstein is a children's poet, Do You? Before he wrote and illustrated children's poetry, he was a cartoonist for Playboy, and wrote songs like A Boy Named Sue, I Got Stoned and I Missed It. I dare you to sing his Mermaid to your kids.
Theater
Michael Crawford, prior to the mid-80s, had been cast almost exclusively in bumbling, comic roles. Then he put on a mask and a cape...
Two-time Tony Award winner John Cullum started out playing Shakespeare in New York, was in the original cast of Camelot, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, On The Twentieth Century, and Shenandoah. Then he was in Urinetown. He was understandably baffled the first time he read the script.
Christy Carlson Romano took the role of Kate/Lucy in Avenue Q. There is something a bit jarring in hearing Kim Possible cry "f* ck, it sucks to be me".
Andrea McArdle, the original Annie, has returned to show business and now plays the nasty Miss Hannigan.
Near the end of its original Broadway run in 1980 David Bowie — he of the sultry voice, smooth onstage moves, and cool persona — played the title character in The Elephant Man. Beyond the role being that of The Grotesque, it is a notorious challenge for an actor, since the script's instructions dictate that he must rely on twisted body language and vocal distortion rather than makeup to convey his severe deformities, but Bowie got excellent reviews.
Rob Paulsen as Gray Fox in the remake Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes. Basically, the fact that Rob Paulsen played a very serious character (a character who is implied to be driven insane from experimentation as well as at times remorseful of his past in war, and in one source was implied to have PTSD) and do so in-character is a very sharp turn against some of his more lighthearted and comical roles.
Maurice LaMarche as Calendar Man in Batman Arkham City a Hannibal Lector esq sadistic murderer who commits his sprees on holidays. Normally he plays comedic roles.
He also plays Mr. Freeze in the same game, a character who definitely would not have been a comedic role.
Normally Martin Sheen plays fatherly type figures, mentors or moral leaders. Not so in Mass Effect where he voices the head of a pro-human terrorist organization and the universe's resident Magnificent Bastard, The Illusive Man.
Web Original
Most fans know YouTube star Toby Turner for playing comedic roles, but they got an unexpected surprise when Toby appeared on Black Box TV episode "This Is For You Baby!" as a vengeful boyfriend and psychopathic murderer. The writers state in the commentary that they picked Toby for the role precisely because people were used to him being funny.
Western Animation
Many of the actors from Gargoyles were also Star Trek: The Next Generation alumni. First up, we have Riker playing David Xanatos. Then, Troi playing both Demona and one half of the Trope NamerYuppie Couple. Also, Geordi as Anansi. Janeway as Titania. Data playing Puck.
On a minor note, those of you familiar with the voice of Lexington who was the good guy/gay gargoyle may not spot him as the psychopathic Simon in Invasion America.
Casting Patrick Stewart as Seti in The Prince of Egypt might be considered a Double Subversion, as he initially acts like a typical "Patrick Stewart character" as a tough but loving father and authority figure deserving of respect. Then, in sharp opposition to the usual Patrick Stewart Speech, he gives a lecture to Moses justifying feeding thousands of Hebrew infants to the crocodiles. Even though the audience is likely to know of the almost-genocide from the Passover story, having Stewart in this role makes it shocking.
In a much less serious (and probably intentional) note, in American Dad, Stewart was cast as Avery Bullock, Stan's often whimsical and bizarre boss.
Going even further, an episode of Family Guy had all the Next Gen actors reprising their roles...as themselves. Except that Stewart is the abusive father figure, Frakes is vapid, Dorn is the gentle guy, and Wheaton is the overeager chi...wait a second...
Similarly, Patrick Stewart being cast as the yokian king in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius qualifies under the comedic against-type casting as well, seeing how his overall character was somewhat comical in spite of his essentially being a sacrificing genocidal ruler.
The Prince of Egypt had this in spades: action hero-type Val Kilmer as Moses/God comes to mind.
Speaking of Michael Dorn, he is also known as the cute and brainy ace of I Am Weasel.
James Hong, veteran character actor and better known as cheesy, Large Ham villains in various kung fu productions (particularly Lo Pan of Big Trouble in Little China), appears in Kung Fu Panda instead as the clueless, Genius Ditz noodle-making goose Mr. Ping. Meanwhile, Action GirlLucy Liu gets to be the sweet-natured, kindly Viper.
Likewise, in Blade Runner James Hong appears as a meek genetic engineer specializing in eyes.
Hong also played goofy Mr. Miyagi parodies in Balls of Fury and Totally Awesome.
Though his other roles may not fit, the decision to cast David Kaye as Optimus Prime in Transformers Animated raised many eyebrows among the fans, given that Kaye's usual role in previous Transformers series' has been Megatron.
The Wild Thornberrys had Tim Curry, he of the deliciously slimy and evil-sounding voice, playing the energetic, good-natured, and wholeheartedly lovable naturalist Nigel Thornberry.
Richard Steven Horvitz is usually known for playing goofy, loudmouthed characters who scream a lot such as Invader Zim, Dagget from The Angry Beavers, and Billy from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy. However he played a serious role in Static Shock in which he played Jimmy Osgood, a shy, nerdy boy who was often bullied. Eventually, he loses it and tries to kill his tormentors with a gun, but he is stopped before he can do anything. The gun still goes off, though, and nearly kills a student.
Keith David, known for playing Dark is Not Evil characters. His role as Dr. Facilier in The Princess and the Frog only kept the dark part, and he also has a humorous side. Usually, the characters David plays are serious.
In an inverse to the David KayeTransformers example listed above, Adler also voiced the villainous Starscream in the live-action movies. His best known Transformers role prior to that was as the considerably more heroic Aerialbot leader Silverbolt in the original cartoon.
Pamela Segal Adlon, usually known for voicing young boys or spunky or motherly women, voiced Luanne's violent, promiscuous, alcoholic, neglectful mother in an episode of King of the Hill.
She also plays a tiny coke-snorting sex fiend on Californication
Mulan also had this as well. No, it's not the title character. You know the character Yao? Well, that guy is voiced by Harvey Fierstein, who is nothing like that character.
Back in the 80's, Jerry Orbach was known for playing on Broadway, as the "touch but fair" dad of Dirty Dancing, and playing mobsters...so what was he doing playing a Space Cowboy? Well, he had never done animation up until that point...
When the intelligent, calm, in-control, thoroughly evil Catbert appeared on Dilbert, he was voiced by Jason Alexander. George Costanza, Abis Mal and Duckman fail to qualify as having any of Catbert's characteristics (with the possible exception of the latter)...
