Playing Against Type / Live-Action TV

• Strangers From Hell stars Lee Dong-wook, best known for his roles in light-hearted romantic comedies, as a serial killer.
• Bob Hope (whose primary style was comedy) guest-stars in a dramatic role (albeit not too heavy in this case) on Highway to Heaven.
• Rowan Atkinson is primarily known for his rubber-faced comic roles in Blackadder and Mr. Bean. In 2016, he took on the role of Jules Maigret, a serious and soft-spoken French detective who hunts down murderers in 1950's Paris.
• 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 1974's Pray for the Wildcats where he'a a psychopathic ad executive who takes several employees (played by William Shatner, Robert Reed, and Marjoe Gortner) out dirtbiking in the Baja California Desert. He's full-on Jerkass in here and he tries to run down and kill Shatner's character. In the early 1980s, meanwhile 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 starred in the TV movie Crime of Innocence as Judge Julius Sullivan, a callously cruel judge who sentences two teenage girls to prison for a minor crime.
  • After Matlock, Griffith returned to roles against type, playing the sociopathic Jack MacGruder 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.)
• Peter Marshall, the genial game show host, as a corrupt, money-hungry record producer and agent in the Season 6 CHiPs episode "Rock Devil Rock" ... but more so because Marshall's character was associated with goth rock, when in contrast the real-life Marshall was (and still is) associated with adult standards and middle-of-the-road music. (Although he did have a few goth rock stars, including Alice Cooper and various members of KISS, as guests on The Hollywood Squares and his late 1970s talk show.)
• Sesame Street has featured several of its main (human) cast in very different roles from their genial Street roles:
  • Allison Bartlett (Gina) has played several mentally and emotionally disturbed characters in episodes of the Law & Order franchise. She also played one of the mobster's mistresses on The Sopranos.
  • Roscoe Orman (Gordon) is a no-nonsense judge in several Law & Order episodes.
  • Sonia Manzano (Maria) has also appeared on Law & Order, both as a judge and as various criminals or witnesses trying to protect the main antagonist.
  • Emilio Delgado (Luis) — yep, also on the Law & Order franchise honor roll — averts most of the grit as he played the usually genial (albeit focused) international editor on the 1977-1982 newspaper drama Lou Grant.
  • This even extends to the Muppets themselves- as Ernie and Bert, Jim Henson and Frank Oz pretty much ended up in a role reversal of their Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear characters.
• Joss Whedon:
  • Nathan Fillion turned up as the villainous Caleb in Buffy the Vampire Slayer after playing roguish hero Captain Malcom Reynolds on Firefly. Not to mention the Jerk Jock Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
    • More accurately, after playing the badass role consistently, playing Rick Castle is a much different role, playing a mystery writer and police consultant, leaving the badassery to Beckett.
  • Oz from Buffy was played by Seth Green, and wasn't the Plucky Comic Relief?
    • The comic relief is his unruffled reaction to pretty much everything.
  • Gina Torres went from playing heroic, deadpan-snarking Zoe on Firefly to playing villainous Dark Messiah Jasmine on Angel. Adam Baldwin went from playing dim-bulb mercenary Jayne on Firefly to playing Big Bad Manipulative Bastard Marcus Hamilton on Angel. And Alan Tudyk goes from the sweet, Bunny Ears Pilot Wash in Firefly to the remorseless serial-killer Alpha in Dollhouse.
• When the Stephen King miniseries The Langoliers was made, most people thought that the Ax-Crazy Craig Toomey would be played by Dean Stockwell. Instead, it was played by Balki!
  • Speaking of Stephen King miniseries', his own take on The Shining contains two examples of Playing Against Type; Steven Weber (famous at the time for playing goofball Brian Hackett from Wings) played the slowly losing his mind Jack Torrence, and Rebecca De Mornay (famous for being typecast as psychotically dangerous women) played the very meek and demure wife Wendy.
• Nick Offerman has made a career of this since playing Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation, either subverting or playing with his manly heterosexual image. Among other notable roles he has played a bisexual baker on Will & Grace, a gay obstetrician on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and a Crazy Survivalist who is essentially "Ron Swanson but gay" in The Last of Us.
• Battlestar Galactica did this wonderfully with Dean Stockwell as Brother Cavil.
  Let's get this genocide on the road.
  • Perhaps not so surprising to see him in a sinister role if you've seen him in Blue Velvet.
• 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.
  • Ditto his role in Arrow, where we're inclined to believe he's not involved in the scheme the heroes are investigating just because it's him, then it turns out he's the mastermind.
• The show The Secret Circle has Chris Zylka, who usually plays Brainless Beauty types. Not so much here.
• 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 Rogue With 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's kept up the villainous work by playing the gentleman with the thistle-down hair in the BBC adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
  • Speaking of Hogfather, Ian Richardson is best know for playing amoral bastard politician Francis Urquhart on House of Cards (UK). For Hogfather he voiced the role of Death, who while certainly sounding and looking scary is possibly the kindest and most moral person in the series and the Trope Codifier for Don't Fear the Reaper.
• Fred Savage (yes, the Fred Savage of The Wonder Years, The Princess Bride, and The Wizard) once played a charismatic rapist on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
  • 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).
  • Not to mention a clarinet-playing heroin addict in The Rules of Attraction.
  • Then factor in he's directed several episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia...
• The Law & Order franchise is arguably the best place for established "good guy" actors to show that they can play villains. Fred Savage isn't the only one doing that trick:
  • Chevy Chase played an anti-Semitic Manipulative Bastard who made his son kill a Jewish woman he had a grudge against.
  • Even America's Sweetheart Julia Roberts got to play a killer once (she took the part because she was dating Benjamin Bratt at the time).
  • The original Playing Against Type actor that Law & Order exhibited: The late, great Jerry Orbach. Originally a Musical Theatre star, he was then-best known for playing sleazy Amoral Attorneys (so like Billy Flynn, a role he originated); in fact, he even played a defense lawyer on L&O before they recast him. Turning him into a jaded, snarky Lawful Neutral detective was an unexpected 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.
  • The most recent one: Anthony Anderson's Kevin Bernard. Last longest role was as Antwon Mitchell on The Shield.
    • Mitchell was also very much against type for Anderson, prior to that, he was known as the go-to Token Black Friend or Plucky Comic Relief.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • Melissa Joan Hart played a teacher raped by her student.
  • Jerry Lewis played Detective John Munch's mentally impaired uncle Andy.
  • Dean Cain. To see Superman playing a serial rapist...Brrrr. Speaking of whom, there's his role as wife-killer Scott Peterson.
  • The Family Ties dad himself, Michael Gross, playing a man who murdered his wife and another random woman. The former because she discovered his infidelities, the latter because he wanted the detectives to think a Serial Killer was at work.
  • Try and unhear Henry Winkler 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.
  • 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 one episode.
  • Martin Short, known for his goofy comic roles, plays a psychic trying to help the police solve a serial rape and murder case. Turns out he was the serial rapist and murderer all along, who targeted virgin women. "Best sex I ever had..."
  • Lynda Carter as murderous grifter Lorraine Dillon, almost impossible to perceive the arguably definitive Wonder Woman as anything but heroic (unless you've seen 'Bobbi Jo and the Outlaw').
  • Christopher Meloni went in the other direction, playing the coach in Gym Teacher: The Movie on Nickelodeon.
    • And a cynical pediatrician on Scrubs, as well as an oddball mutant Freakshow in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and another oddball KKK leader in the sequel.
    • Plus the oddball camp cook in Wet Hot American Summer.
    • And the Flamboyant Gay hotel clerk in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is particularly funny in contrast to his previous appearance in a Terry Gilliam film, Twelve Monkeys - as a cop.
    • Let us not forget the role he was best known for before he played Stabler: Depraved Bisexual Chris Keller on Oz. He treats Murder the Hypotenuse as a commandment regarding his lover, Beecher. Plus, at first he worked for Beecher's enemy (Vern Schillinger) and only pretended to be in love with Beecher on Schillinger's orders, part of a Batman Gambit to earn Beecher's trust and love and set him up for a heartbreaking rejection which drove The Alcoholic Beecher to fall off the wagon and hit the prison moonshine hard. And then when Beecher was at his absolute lowest, Schillinger revealed Keller's true loyalties to a drunken Beecher right before having Keller break Beecher's arms and legs. There was a Heel–Face Turn later that eventually led to Beecher forgiving him, but still.
    • 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.
    • It turns out that the oddball weirdos he's played over the years is closer to Meloni's actual personality than the tough-as-nails Stabler ever was. The man has an absolutely macabre sense of humor, enjoys the surreal and the bizarre, and can make a joke out of anything.
  • And then, of course, there's Richard Belzer, who before becoming Detective John Munch (on Homicide: Life on the Street) was most widely known for his stand-up comedy.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent:
  • Stephen Colbert as the killer in one episode.
  • Whoopi Goldberg as a "Ma Barker" type gangleader in another.
  • Michael York as a metrosexual Charles Manson!
  • Neil Patrick Harris played a Jeffrey Dahmer Expy who ate part of his victims.
  • The Family Ties dad himself, Michael Gross, playing a man so desperate for a woman's love that he murdered her brother-in-law (she had confided to him that she was afraid he was molesting her niece).
  • Dakota (Elle's older sister) played an abused child with an entirely different twist in 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.
• Law & Order: UK:
  • Across the pond, comedic actor and game show host Bradley Walsh was thoroughly impressive as Briscoe's Expy Ronnie Brooks.
  • Inverted with Jamie Bamber, who played a Nice Guy rather than a villain—DS Matt Devlin. In fact, most of his roles have been varying versions of Nice Guys, but roughly 1/3 of them have been the opposite, and all very effective:
    • Between BSG and Law & Order: UK he was Martin Klar, a corrupt arms dealer who briefly became Echo's abusive husband on Dollhouse.
    • His first role after leaving LOUK was the criminal of the week (or rather one of them) on an episode of CSI: Miami. Although he was far less monstrous than most of the bad guys this show has dealt with, it was still unnerving to see him pick up a golf club and bash some poor girl's head in, then try to blame it on his partner, smugly declaring that reasonable doubt as to who was guilty would easily get him acquitted.
    • He played an uber-sleazy photographer on Major Crimes who was such a Jerkass (among other things, he actually witnessed the murder that was being investigated but didn't call the cops as it would have revealed that he'd been spying on the victim) that the team was downright disappointed that he was innocent of the primary crime—and equally pleased and smug when they managed to nail him for manslaughter (for basically setting in motion the events that led to the incident).
    • He's Amoral Attorney James Craddock in the movie The Car: Road to Revenge.
    • His role as the titular John Doe: Vigilante actually subverts this, as while the man is a Serial Killer, his victims are Asshole Victims—child abusers/molesters, rapists, abusive husbands/boyfriends.
    • He also subverts this in his role as Strike Back's Colonel Alexander Coltrane, who borders on Anti-Hero—while technically a good guy, he's downright ruthless at times, inflicting Water Torture on a Double Agent, refusing to aid an injured henchman and allowing him to bleed to death, and coldly shooting the two people who murdered two of his subordinates at a time when technically, neither of them posed any danger to him.
    • The murderous Depraved Homosexual Sam in Series 2 of Innocent (UK).
    • The Bitch in Sheep's Clothing DCI Martyn Hunter in DI Ray, who starts out as a generic Nice Guy, utterly in love with and devoted to the title character, before turning out to be a Dirty Cop in league with the human traffickers she's been investigating, had sex with an underage trafficking victim (though he swears she thought she was of legal age), and is ultimately found to be indirectly involved in the Victim of the Week murder.
• One of the most famous examples of this trope might have come about when Nichelle Nichols, an African-American woman, played against her entire race and gender. Specifically, Nichols was cast as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series. Uhura was the fourth-most powerful person on the Enterprise, a valued member of the ship's command team, and even kissed the (white) William Shatner—TV's first kiss between a white and black couple—in a landmark episode. At the time (the mid-to-late 1960's), black women played one type of role on television—servants, often sassy. By playing Uhura, Nichols shattered every perception of what African-American women could be. Her influence even spilled over into the real world—Mae Jemison, the first African-American female astronaut, named Nichols as one of the reasons she entered the space program, and none other that Martin Luther King Jr. personally praised Nichols for her work and urged her to stay on the show when she considered leaving, saying "You are playing a role that is not about your color! This role could be played by anyone—this is not a black role. This is not a female role! A blue eyed blonde or a pointed ear green person could take this role!"
  • Whoopi Goldberg (mentioned above) specifically cites seeing Nichols playing Uhura as one of the landmark moments of her childhood; after watching an episode, she ran to her mother and cried "Momma! There's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!" Decades later, Goldberg, by then known for her comic talents, requested that the creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation find a role for her, even offering to play a janitor if it meant honoring Nichols. The producers instead came up with Guinan, the wise and mysterious bartender on the Enterprise who was even able to stand up to Q, a nigh-omnipotent Reality Warper.
  • 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.
  • The Star Trek universe (tee hee) also has 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. Years later he also showed up in Coronation Street as a Shrinking Violet dying of a brain tumour.
• 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.
  • On Harry's Law, he played a smarmy Jerkass, but for once he was a heroic smarmy Jerkass.
  • And his role as Castillo of the Enterprise C in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" was a noble, self-sacrificing Federation officer.
• Bob Saget, best known as playing Danny Tanner on Full House and serving as the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos, was also 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. He pretty much blew his wholesome reputation out of the water when he cameoed in Half Baked as a guy at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting (NSFW!), though that scene was more on-brand for him than Full House ever was.
• Matthew Morrison a year before he started playing teacher Will Schuester on Glee played a rapist cop on an episode of NUMB3RS.
• 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, at least at first.
  • Doug Hutchison made his name playing psychopathic villains: Tooms on The X-Files, Catherine's Dark Messiah kidnapper on Millennium (1996), and sadistic guard Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile. So it comes as a surprise that Horace Goodspeed is a well-meaning hippy ("Namaste!") whose greatest flaw is his failure to stand up to the more evil DHARMA members (i.e. most of them).
• 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 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 Jerkass 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."
    • Or the fact that when he left, he was replaced by mobster Fat Tony.
  • Once again, Dean Cain makes the list by playing a murderer addicted to gambling in 'Snake Eyes'. Though portrayed as a sympathetic person, he is still is quite a ruthless killer.
  • French Stewart appeared as a serial killer. Bad Gadget! Bad, bad Gadget!
    • Stewart also played a pretty skeevy informant in an episode of Castle, and another serial killer (who dismembered his victims with an electric turkey carver) in several episodes of NCIS.
  • Bug Hall, best known for his portrayal of Alfalfa in the 1994 Little Rascals movie, played a schizophrenic serial killer who is haunted by the images of his friends who perished in a fire he accidentally started.
  • Mitch Pileggi as the shotgun-wielding remorse killer in "Normal". No, not Skinner!
  • Ben Savage of Boy Meets World fame is normally known being in sitcoms. While not as extreme as other examples, his role in the episode "Nelson's Sparrow" was as a younger version of Mandy Patinkin's Jason Gideon.
• Prior to 3rd Rock from the Sun, John Lithgow mostly played serious villains.
  • 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 a Deadpan Snarker engineer in 2010.
  • And then a serious psychopathic villain in Dexter.
  • Lord John Whorfin was anything but a "serious villain."
  • Also Barney's estranged father living a wholesome suburban life in How I Met Your Mother.
• 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 Bastard Big 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.
• John Glover is usually the actor of villains in movies and TV shows. The personality he exhibits seldom, if ever, changes.
  • He acts out a scientist Dr. Jason Woodrue in Batman & Robin. Dr. Woodrue had no regard for ethics in his experiments, especially his super-serum.
  • All throughout the TV series Brimstone he acted out the Devil. Yet he also acted out an angel once in a while, as all the angels and demons were brothers who looked alike.
  • He famously acted out Lex Luthor's father Lionel on Smallville. Again, a villain just like the preceding. A twist of fate: Lionel meets with a change of heart in Season 4 and becomes a ally to Clark Kent, but not without having moments that make you seriously doubt his alignment. Promise and Traveler comes to mind. But after his death, the Lionel Luthor who escaped from the parallel universe is the Lionel who never changed, thus a revert to his former evil character.
• 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-Gray Morality.
• Michael Shanks' main role for the past decade or so has been the nerdy, courageous archaeologist 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 (1977), 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.
  • 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.
    "WHEATON!!!"
• 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.
  • Contrast his role as Doc in 3:10 to Yuma (2007) 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 other aspects of 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-Sociopathic Hero 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' 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 later was 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".
• Doctor Who:
  • When William Hartnell took on the role of the Doctor in 1963, it was after decades of playing "Hard Men" and Barking Sergeant Majors. Verity Lambert, looking for someone who could play a harsh and antiheroic character while still making him loveable, was impressed by Hartnell's 'warmth', and he took the role in part to move against his existing typecasting.
  • After leaving the series, Carole Ann Ford tried to ensure that she wouldn't be typecast as innocent girls (being much older than Susan in real life) by immediately playing a (very unglamourised) hooker in the downbeat ITV crime series Public Eye.
  • Jon Pertwee was mostly known for Goons-esque comedy roles and voice acting before being cast as the suave Gentleman Adventurer-style Third Doctor. He had in fact been cast for his comic abilities as the producer who cast him wanted to go in a more comedy-based direction, but ended up playing the role straight in an action show (although his comic talents were well-used).
  • Tom Baker, who played the unshakable, joyful and adorable Fourth Doctor, had been mainly playing tormented, cold and darkly charismatic villains, and relished the opportunity to play such a heroic role ("I seem to have played so many psychotics, it will be a pleasant change"). Finally in a role that fit his natural personality, he heavily identified with the character, and became quite addicted.
  • Peter Davison was better known at the time as an actor in drama. This was something of Stunt Casting but served to indicate that the Doctor was going to become a more human and emotional character after Tom Baker's Angst? What Angst?.
  • Christopher Eccleston, better known at the time for his roles in serious dramas. This served to indicate that the revival was going to be taken very seriously indeed and was not going to be a pile of wobbly sets and inconsistent character writing like Who was popularly remembered as.
    • 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.
  • Mark Sheppard is generally known for the following types of roles: either outright villains, characters who aren't villainous but still pretty shady or something completely in between. So when he showed up in a two episode stint at the start of series six, it's outright shocking to learn he plays one of the definite good guys this time around.
• Ashley Johnson. Southern prostitute. That is all.
• 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 was also the narrator of a children's show called Jellabies/Jellikins, which is a show aimed at 2-6 year olds.
• Brenda Song's breakout role was on Nick's 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd where she played an Asian and Nerdy character. Now she pretty much always plays Asian Airheads. Way more bizarrely, she's a bitchy, sociopathic girlfriend of the lead of The Social Network, who goes to such extremes as lighting a bed on fire. And makes it believable. Whoa, She Really Can Act.
• Jenna Leigh Green is best remembered for playing Libby, a certain cheerleader who used to be the Trope Namer for Alpha Bitch, 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.
• Clancy Brown is very often a villain, with roles including a sadistic guard in The Shawshank Redemption, The Antichrist in Carnivàle and Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League - even his role as Mr. Krabs in Spongebob Squarepants is a pretty big Jerkass. So, it's kind of surprising that in the legal drama The Deep End, his firm partner character is the nice one who is benevolent to the associates, and it's the other partner who is the unpleasant Amoral Attorney.
  • Don't forget Highlander. The Kurgan is the strongest - and nastiest - of all the immortals.
  • He originally auditioned for the role of Superman himself in Superman: The Animated Series.
  • In Earth Two he played one of the main protagonists... but found himself in frequent conflict with the other major protagonist.
  • Brown was cast as Reasonable Authority Figure George Stacey in The Spectacular Spider-Man. In the same series he also played the part of the dim-witted Rhino.
  • Plus, many were surprised to see him play the fatherly Sheriff Corbin in Sleepy Hollow.
• Breaking Bad:
  • Bryan Cranston was known for playing a Bumbling Dad on Malcolm in the Middle. He then won the Emmy for Best Drama Actor four times (three in a row) playing Walter White, high-school chemistry teacher turned ruthless meth cook and drug lord.
  • Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan cast Cranston against type several years earlier in The X-Files episode "Drive" as a racist jerk. It's also an example of Gilligan playing against type; see the Film Writing entry for this trope.
  • Jesse Plemon, before Breaking Bad, was known for his role on Friday Night Lights as the Adorkable Nice Guy Landry. In Breaking Bad he plays Todd, who is quite affable, but is also a complete Sociopath who is able to execute a child without hesitation.
  • DJ Qualls makes a guest appearance in the second season episode "Better Call Saul", with his character initially appearing to be one of the nerdy losers who he'd made a career out of playing. It then turned out that he was actually an undercover DEA agent, with a much tougher personality than you'd expect to see from the guy.
• 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. He didn't just contemplate it.
• 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.
  • This is not the only time that has happen in the toku genre. Machiko Soga is known as the "Queen of Tokusatsu Villainy". What was her final role before her untimely death? Heavenly Saint Magiel in Mahou Sentai Magiranger who is a benevolent, if initially suspicious of the main characters, leader of the forces of good magic.
• What do Amy Adams, Dan Lauria, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Brian Austin Green, Dean Cain, Tori Spelling, Shawn Ashmore, and Maggie Lawson have in common? They're all Smallville villains, of course.
• Allison Mack goes from the soft-spoken Nice Girl to a wild, drunk and very Cluster F-Bomb happy Marilyn.
• Character actor Kenneth MacDonald, best known for playing smooth villains in The Three Stooges shorts and B westerns, had a recurring role as a judge on Perry Mason.
  • MacDonald's Playing Against Type goes as far back as 1947; in Crossfire, he has a brief sympathetic role as an Army officer who assists in the capture of an anti-Semitic killer.
• After decades of being mostly known for his role as the Enterprise's resident Butt-Monkey on Star Trek, it surely was a relief for Walter Koenig to portray Magnificent Bastard Al Bester on Babylon 5. He eventually stated that while he is very happy he played Chekov, for this reason his favorite role in his career was Bester. It also made him the envy of other Trek alum.
  • Played with in the case of Brad Dourif's character Brother Edward, a former serial killer before he was mindwiped and given a new personality. His former personality never emerges, and throughout the episode he is a kind, forgiving monk dedicated to doing the right thing.
  • Jeffrey Combs, known for his Smug Snake roles in Trek (particularly Weyoun), played a telepath assistant to an episode's villain in a first-season episode of B5. The reason it falls under this trope is that he's ultimately responsible for bringing the villain down; his own character was explicitly not a bad guy.
• 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 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. Further examples from Dexter include John Lithgow, at the time best known for 3rd Rock from the Sun, as the ultra-disturbing Trinity Killer in Season Four (although as mentioned earlier, he had frequently played villains prior to 3rd Rock), and Jimmy Smits, known for playing noble heroes on NYPD Blue and The West Wing, as the increasingly unstable murderer-wannabe 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 nauseating.
• Perhaps an even more famous example in a made-for-TV movie: Farrah Fawcett, previously best known for the role in Charlie's Angels that established her as a sex symbol, was first recognized by the general public as a serious actress when she played a woman who killed her physically abusive husband in The Burning Bed.
• Katie Couric did something between this and Adam Westing in Will & Grace. She played herself, but poked holes in her reputation as a chipper, energetic Genki Girl and turned it into a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing facade.
• Before playing Supernatural's Castiel, Misha Collins mostly played creepy guys (the serial rapist/murderer in Karla) or Russians ("Vlad" in CSI) 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 HawthoRNe pretty damn vicious, using tactics that would probably get an actual detective reprimanded at least.
• John Ritter is best known for portraying the happy-go-lucky Jack Tripper and various comedic characters (plus, he had a Real Life reputation as a Nice Guy), so it was quite a shock to see him in Lifetime Movie of the Week Lethal Vows. Just look at the poster◊.
  • He plays a similarly evil role in a the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Monogamy."
  • He also plays a crooked cop in Bride of Chucky.
  • And the titular villain in the Buffy episode "Ted".
• Bill Pullman normally plays good guys or at least aloof heroes. So seeing him as a pedophilic child murderer on Torchwood: Miracle Day is very disturbing and surprising.
  • Torchwood is good at this. Peter Capaldi is best known for playing Magnificent Bastard Anti-Hero Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It — a man with no scruples or shame over the corrupt government he works for. In Children of Earth, he plays John Frobisher, a Butt-Monkey Anti-Villain who is so ashamed of his governments' acts he commits suicide after murdering his family to spare them from being turned over to the 456.
• Most of Chevy Chase's most well-known and beloved roles — such as Fletch, Clark Griswold, etc — tend to be smooth, intelligent and swift-witted Deadpan Snarkers who, even if they're not always on top of the situation, are usually the cleverest and funniest person in the room. Then there's Pierce Hawthorne in Community who can be most easily summed up as basically the exact opposite of almost every single one of these traits.
  • This is a debatable example since people familiar with Chase's off-screen antics (especially the ones that led to his permanent ban from Saturday Night Live) can reasonably argue that he's actually playing himself.
  • From the same show, Joel McHale typically plays shallow jerks. Though Jeff may start as one, over time he is portrayed as a begrudgingly selfless and deeply insecure and damaged man, far from his typical role.
• Whatever you might think about Hayden Panettiere playing Amanda Knox in Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy - and there were some who definitely disapproved not only of her casting but of the film being made in the first place - you can't deny that it's a change of pace, to put it mildly. Then there's her playing a damaged Alpha Bitch of a country singer on Nashville, resulting in plenty of She Really Can Act reactions.
• 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.
• Will Arnett playing a loving, caring husband and father on Up All Night is far removed from the selfish jerks he normally is known to play.
• Charlie Hunnam was known for playing Pretty Boy roles in shows like Undeclared and films like Nicholas Nickleby. That is, until he played the lead Badass Biker on Sons of Anarchy.
• René Auberjonois got a rep for playing an effeminate wimp during his stint on Benson, but ended up played tough guy Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, even making his voice more gravelly.
  • And then there was his playing a child-molesting priest on Saving Grace.
• Faran Tahir initially plays to type when he appears as an Al Qaida-aligned terrorist in the NCIS pilot episodes on JAG, but makes a second appearance on JAG as a different character, a CIA operative who Harm manages to smuggle out of Libya.
• One episode of The Good Wife starred Miranda Cosgrove as a washed-up teen singer on trial for a DUI and attempted murder.
• Buddy Hackett, foul-mouthed and notoriously undisciplined comedian, once appeared on Make Room for Daddy as “Buddy Bruno,” taking over for two weeks at the Copa while Danny went on vacation. The episode had him as the (presumably) single father of a small girl whom he is raising rather irregularly, if lovingly. In the second half of the episode he has to tearfully plead with the child welfare people to let him keep the girl. Definitely against type!
  • To say nothing of his starring roles later on in family-friendly films like The Music Man, The Love Bug and The Little Mermaid (1989).
• 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 Made-for-TV Movie titled The Legend of Lizzie Borden.
• You remember Kate Capshaw? That annoying Damsel in Distress 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.
• Robbie Coltrane was (and arguably still is) known primarily as a comedy actor, or else Rubeus Hagrid. First-time viewers of Cracker may be shocked to see Coltrane playing a character who, while allowing for flourishes of wit and ribald humor, is extremely flawed and borderline unlikable. Coltrane won three BAFTAs for the role, proving himself a remarkably versatile talent.
• Amber Benson is best known as the wallflower Lipstick Lesbian Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Needless to say Buffy fans got a bit of a surprise when Amber played a vampire in an episode of Supernatural.
• Emilia Fox was either known as Dr Nikki Alexander on Silent Witness or else Delicate and Sickly yet kindly adoptive mother Sylvia in Ballet Shoes. Then came her memorable role as Big Bad Lady of Black Magic Morgause in Merlin.
• Hannah Spearritt was previously in S Club 7 and the various TV series had her playing a quirky Dumb Blonde version of herself. Then came Primeval where she played an Action Girl.
• The Olsen twins frequently had the Tomboy and Girly Girl dynamic in all their projects. Ashley was always the Girly Girl while Mary-Kate was the Tomboy. Winning London swapped their roles around as this time Mary-Kate played an uptight Child Prodigy Chloe while Ashley played the easy-going Lad-ette Riley.
• Christopher B. Duncan: Black and Nerdy Upper-Class Twit on the The Jamie Foxx Show, Comsumate Professional Killer of Veronica Mars who calmly disposes the Big Bad.
• Nicholas Brendon in mostly known for playing the adorkable funny guy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Criminal Minds), so when he appears Private Practice as the rapist of one of the main characters, it's quite shocking.
• Subverted in Elementary with the casting of Vinnie Jones. The more we learn about his character, the more the choice makes sense.
• Say what you want about Swindle, but it's fun to see Jennette McCurdy playing a girl as far from Sam Puckett as you can get without a sex change; ditto Ariana Grande cast as someone who unlike Cat Valentine isn't a Cloudcuckoolander.
• Kaley Cuoco frequently plays quirky sitcom characters - Bridget in 8 Simple Rules, Penny in The Big Bang Theory, Brandy in Brandy & Mr. Whiskers. In the eighth season of Charmed her character Billie starts out seeming like her typical type - then we learn the truth and things really change.
• In a case of a production company Playing Against Type, Quinn Martin Productions (which specialised in Crime Dramas throughout its 27-year existence) made science fiction series The Invaders (1967), the World War II series Twelve O'Clock High (based on the movie of the same name) and the horror anthology Tales Of The Unexpected (not that one). The company's only theatrical feature (1971's The Mephisto Waltz) was more going against type, since it was a horror movie.
• Jason Biggs is best known for his work on the American Pie films, with the majority of his other roles basically being derivative of that performance, typecasting him as a nebbish loser with difficulty standing up for himself. His character in Orange Is the New Black is a welcome change of pace, allowing to utilize a much wider range of emotions, be a bit more proactive as a character, and deliver a few What the Hell, Hero? speeches whenever he feels wronged.
• The legendary Ned Beatty has made his entire career playing nice guys, loveable goofballs, and forgetful nudniks who wouldn't hurt a fly. Yet in the CSI episode "Sweet Jane", he turns in an absolutely chilling, completely charming performance as Doctor Dave, a gentle pediatric dentist who not only was a kind and considerate dentist who made sure his patients first visit wasn't pain-filled and traumatic, but was also a vicious Serial Killer responsible for the deaths of at least five victims. (Like Buddy Hackett above, this also extends to animation - Beatty voices the avuncular and completely evil Lotso in Toy Story 3.)
• Many guest stars on The Muppet Show were given the opportunity to show off talents they were not known for, in addition to their well-known talents.
• Kevin Tighe has been doing this for a few decades now, because he is so connected with his Emergency! character Roy Desoto. With Roy being a big hero type, he has often played villains since then.
  • Robert Fuller was a case in the series itself. He was and still is a cowboy actor to the core. He initially turned down the Dr. Brackett role because he still hoped cowboy shows would come back.
• Raphael Sbarge is an odd case. In a video game? He's usually playing the nicest guy on your team; Scorch, Carth Onasi (albeit, that one has a Properly Paranoid streak), Kaiden Alenko. In Live Action TV? He makes appearances as a child-killing nut, a deranged serial rapist, a terrorist and spy, another mentally-unhinged mass killer, and another spy and terrorist. What is he playing in Once Upon a Time? Jiminy Cricket, arguably the most moral guy on the show. So, it's playing against type as far as his live action roles, but playing very close to it for his video game ones.
• Actor Brian Thompson has spent most of his career playing villains. You need a huge, muscled barbarian? Check. How about any number of menacing aliens? He's your man. Crazed killers? You bet. Mafia thugs? Oh yes. How about a vampire who's also a crazed killer mafia thug. Sure, why not? How about a conscientious white knight law enforcement officer who is so cool he doesn't have to carry a gun and convinces most criminals to surrender just by talking to them and never has an unkind word for anyone? Yeah, well, he did that too, in Key West, just about the only heroic character he's ever played in his entire career. He also played Hercules of all people in the Jason and the Argonauts miniseries.
• Melissa & Joey provides two type-breakings for the price of one - Melissa Joan Hart's best-known for the pretty sensible Clarissa Darling and Sabrina Spellman, while Joey Lawrence isn't renowned for playing grounded characters. On this show she's the flighty one and he's the down-to-earth one.
• Billy Dee Williams in Brian's Song; where he portrays the shy, soft spoken, Gale Sayers. Quite a change from his usual portrayal of the suave, smooth, ladies man.
• In the short-lived series Johnny Staccato, the role of kindly jazz club owner Waldo is played by Eduardo Ciannelli, an actor who made a career of playing menacing villains (especially mobsters).
• Red Dwarf has a very interesting example. Chris Barrie had become best known for playing, in his own words, "gits", especially Rimmer and had wanted to play something else. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's solution was to create an alternate universe counterpart called Ace Rimmer, a dimension-hopping Ace Pilot who was essentially Rimmer's polar opposite. Even now, the character is much beloved by the fandom.
• Garret Dillahunt, a man who tends to play unsavory characters from psychotic killers to pedophiles, playing the dumb and loving yet harmless family man Burt Chance on Raising Hope. His role as the slightly old fashioned but still redeemable Jody Kimball-Kinney on The Mindy Project also fits
• Mike O'Malley, best known for being either the zany and hammy host of Nickelodeon GUTS, dopey husband and dad Jimmy Warner of Yes, Dear or open-minded dad Burt Hummel in Glee plays an douchebag van renter in the Parksand Recreation epsiode "Bus Tour".
• Kevin Whately, better known as Sergeant (later Inspector) Lewis on Inspector Morse, took a break from the role in 2013. A year later, he played a joyfully corrupt ex-copper McGhee on Inspector George Gently. In fact, he plugged both of the male leads with a rifle —in a John Woo church shootout— before he finally bit the dust. This occurs in the finale episode "Gently Into the Cathedral".
• The 1986 Made-for-TV Movie Act of Vengeance stars Charles Bronson not as a tough guy but as a dedicated union man (real-life labor leader Joseph Yablonksi) wanting better conditions for miners. It's also one of the few movies where his character gets Killed Off for Real.
• In an interesting variant in Teen Wolf, it's the fact that Doug Jones never dons any prosthetics during his appearance as Barrow. Which is pretty shocking considering not only his penchant for doing so in other works and the prevalence of such effects on this show.
• Filipino noontime "variety show" Eat Bulaga!. Every Lenten season, the show's "Dabarkads" (mainstays, mostly comedians) appear in heavy, tear-jerking dramas instead of their usual menu of knock-knock jokes and ribald humor. Not surprisingly, veteran funnymen like Vic Sotto, Joey De Leon, and Michael V often end up doing a much better job with drama than those who actually specialize in drama.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Jamie Chung typically plays an Asian Airhead. Her version of Mulan is The Stoic and a Proud Warrior Race Girl.
  • Robert Carlyle's characters tend to be the Butt-Monkey of the story, rather than the ruthless Chessmaster Rumpelstiltskin is.
  • Retroactively for Jamie Dornan. He's usually a Villain Protagonist or an extremely dark Anti-Hero. His turn as Graham is probably the most heroic role he's ever had.
  • See above for Raphael Sbarge, who is playing pinball as far as typecasting; Jiminy is very much against his live- action typecasting, but very much in line with his video game roles.
• Eion Bailey is usually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold or Deadpan Snarker (often both at once). He plays a Yandere in an episode of Stalker (2014). His role in Band of Brothers is a bit against type as well - Webster being a Cultured Warrior who doesn't do much snarking.
• In Working Dog Productions' Frontline, Rob Sitch played the dimwitted host of the titular Show Within a Show. In The Hollowmen, he played an Obstructive Bureaucrat who was no genius either. He breaks the pattern in Utopia, in which he is the Only Sane Man while everyone else (besides Only Sane Woman Nat) is either an Obstructive Bureaucrat or an idiot - or both.
• Robert Englund, although a mainstay of horror films, first hit the big time in V (1983) as the lovable woobie Visitor, Willie. This created a TV image strong enough that when Freddy's Nightmares had an Origin Story story for Krueger, Englund's face was largely obscured to avoid associations with Willie.
• Tony Robinson cast himself against type when he wrote Maid Marian and Her Merry Men. A historic comedy featuring a scheming villain and his Bumbling Sidekicks, and Robinson's the schemer, not the bumbler.
• Hannibal loved this trope. It was an infamously dark mashup of Gothic Horror and Police Procedural that was best known for artful and visually striking arrangements of mutilated human corpses, for managing to make Food Porn out of a cannibal's dinner in almost every episode...and for managing to snag several well-known comedians as guest stars. Eddie Izzard, Molly Shannon and Dan Fogler all appear in the first season, playing one-off or recurring roles as demented serial killers and/or unlucky victims. ^note  Patton Oswalt was also offered a role, but he declined. As dark as the show may be, one gets the sense that those actors are all having the time of their lives getting to be scary for once.
• In the mid-90's, Peter Boyle was best known as the gruff, crass Jerk with a Heart of Gold Frank Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. Audiences were shocked, then, when he was chosen to play the title character in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," an episode of The X-Files. While there's definitely a bit of Frank (specifically the jerkiness) in the part, Clyde is also far more multilayered and complex—he's a genuinely psychic individual cursed with the power to foretell how people will die. Boyle plays the role with a surprising mix of humor, pain, and vulnerability (he even kills himself at the end of the episode), and his turn as Clyde is often praised as the best guest star in one of the best episodes of the series.
• At the height of his St. Elsewhere fame, Mark Harmon gave such a terrifying performance as Serial Killer Ted Bundy in the 1986 miniseries The Deliberate Stranger that he freaked himself out. It earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

  "The Bundy role .... was a stretch. I was glad when I could put that one away when it was done."

  • 15 years later, he gave an equally scary performance as another infamous murderer—Thomas Capano in the 2001 miniseries And Never Let Her Go. A review flat-out described him as "all evil".
  • In fact, many critics have lauded one or the other or both performances as his finest work, with one citing the irony that "someone who's built his career on playing honorable men such as doctors and law enforcement officers is apparently most at home playing amoral sociopaths."
• Calum Worthy played the Ditzy Dez on Austin & Ally, then the cunning and antagonistic Victor on Bizaardvark.
• In Jessica Jones (2015) David Tennant plays the psychotic stalker, Mind Rapist and actual rapist Kilgrave. However, before taking the role of Kilgrave, Tennant rose to popularity by his role as the Adorkable Motor Mouth Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who.
  • The contrast is especially striking, since Tennant plays both Kilgrave and the Doctor very similarly. They both speak with the same Estuary accent^note  Tennant's natural accent is Scottish and Kilgrave uses the same drawn-out "Well..." as the Doctor does. The scene where Kilgrave first meets Jessica is 99% the Doctor. The only part which isn't is how he dismisses the girls he's with.
• The Indian Detective: William Shatner, best known as playing heroic characters like James T. Kirk or lately campy self-parodies, plays David Marlowe, the sleazy, corrupt real estate mogul who's secretly working with much worse men such as Gopal Chandakar. Comedian Russell Peters similarly has the title role in a semi-dramatic show.
• China Anne McClain usually plays bubbly, sweet, generally kind characters. But in K.C. Undercover, she plays Sheena, a deadly, outright murderous assassin, possibly the only actually villainous role she's ever played, seeing as Uma from Descendants 2 is more of an Anti-Hero.
• Voice actress June Foray is most well known for lightweight roles throughout her lengthy 70-year career in entertainment. However, she undergoes one hell of an unexpected turn in the original Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" as the frightening Talky Tina, a parody of the cheery Chatty Cathy doll (whom she also originally voiced). This marks what is far and away the darkest role June has ever portrayed.
  • Sterling Holloway follows June's foray into The Twilight Zone with a similar result. Known for his kid-friendly roles in many Disney films — most notably as Winnie the Pooh — Sterling plays a twisted TV repairman in the episode "What's in the Box?" The fact his natural voice is that of Winnie the Pooh's only makes this performance all the more creepy.
• Edward Asner usually plays curmudgeonly older guy roles and his guest role as a Nazi hiding as a Holocaust survivor on CSI: NY was rather surprising to many, at least when the character dropped the act near the end.
• Patrick Warburton is best known for playing Dumb Muscle characters who tend to be quite comical and hammy. In A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017), he plays Lemony Snicket, a very intelligent, serious, and deadpan character.
• Eugene Levy is best known for playing nebbishy dads and other nerds, but on Schitt's Creek he plays Sharp-Dressed Man and former business mogul Johnny Rose, who is a devoted and romantic husband. He still does have plenty of awkwardly supportive moments with his adult children, however.
• In The Outer Limits (1995) episode "The Grell", Marina Sirtis played the callous, cruel slave owner Olivia "Liv" Kohler.
• Eternal Romantic False Lead James Marsden has a long history of getting dumped by female main characters, despite being an unfailingly nice and kind guy who looks like a blue-eyed Ken doll. Then Dead to Me cast him as an emotionally abusive psychopath who feels no guilt about causing a man's death, and dumped his girlfriend for being unhappy. Then in the second season he also played that character's twin, an unfailingly nice and kind guy who looks like a blue-eyed Ken doll.
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker had so many examples, it’s easier to list the actors that played to their usual type.
  • Phil Silvers, famous for playing fast-talking swindlers, appears in "Horror in the Heights" 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.
  • John Fiedler, the original voice of Piglet, played fast talking morgue attendant and informant Gordon "Gordy the Ghoul" Spangler.
  • Jim Backus, who was the original voice of Mr. Magoo and played Mr. Howell on Gilligan's Island, played a motorcycle dealer and war veteran in "Chopper".
  • Jamie Farr, best known for playing the wacky Colonel Klinger on M*A*S*H, played a bitter high school science teacher in "Primal Scream".
  • Michael Strong, who usually played tough guys, played the cowardly head of a construction company in "The Energy Eater".
  • Comedic actor Jan Murray had a serious role as a pimp in "The Vampire".
  • Murray Matheson, who usually played Reasonable Authority Figures and Affably Evil and Faux Affably Evil villains, played a stuffy antique dealer in "Horror in the Heights".
• Persons Unknown: Kandyse McClure has usually played heroic or at least neutral characters, who are generally quite mild-mannered. Her role as Ax-Crazy psycho lesbian tattooed crook Erika on the show was thus very different from her roles before or since.
• KidCom regular Keely Marshall can be a desperate Stalker with a Crush on The Thundermans or a cruel Alpha Bitch on Kirby Buckets. If you watch one of those shows regularly (but not both), seeing her on the other could be jarring.
• Pam & Tommy: Lily James made a career out of playing ingenues, English Roses, and Spirited Young Ladies — basically, the sweet, young heroines of period dramas. She's cast way against type here as sultry Playboy Magazine bombshell Pamela Anderson, who has to deal with the fallout of a sex tape.
• Ed Wynn had only ever done comedic roles prior to his appearance in the Playhouse 90 production of Requiem for a Heavyweight. Despite being uncertain of his own ability, he took the role at the urging of his son, Keenan Wynn, and he impressed absolutely no one with his constant flubbing of lines and fallbacks to old catchphrases during rehersals with only Jack Palance's threat to walk should he be fired keeping him in the production at all. His actual live performance, however, was so well-received that it inspired a television movie dramatizing the production and Ed went on to successfully star in several other dramatic roles.
• In most of her sitcom roles, Charlotte Ritchie tends to play the "normal" one, and generally projects an air of such wholesomeness that on Taskmaster there was a running gag about her auditioning as a children's TV host. And then there's George, who is actually a schoolteacher, but also loves weird fetish pornography and kinky rough sex (sometimes involving fake moustaches).
• Columbo had a fun habit of casting recognizable television faces as the episode's murderer.
• Sylvester McCoy is best known for family-friendly worksn including his best known role as The Doctorn making his appearance on the decidedly adult Sense8 a surprise, especially with his first line being "HOLY SHIT!"
• On Haven, the show's ultimate Big Bad is a quiet, soft-spoken, Affably Evil sociopath...played by William Shatner, who is not at all known for giving subtle performances. It led to a He Really Can Act response from viewers, because he nails the part and is genuinely terrifying.
• Cobra Kai: Peyton List is a Disney Channel alumna, and mostly played nice girls from fairly well-off socio-economic backgrounds. In Cobra Kai, her character (Tory) is a jealous, aggressive, vindictive, violent bitch from the Wrong Side of the Tracks.
• The documentary Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle managed to do this with an actor in his iconic role — namely, Adam West, best known as the 60s TV Batman, reading lines from The Dark Knight Returns, which is about as far as you can get from the 60s series and still be Batman.
• Rick Springfield played a shock rocker possessed by Satan in Supernatural, whereas musically in real life he's best known for his pop-rock hit "Jesse's Girl".
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): John DiMaggio, best known for playing loveable Large Ham characters, appears as racist antagonist Alderman Fenwick, one of Louis de Pointe du Lac's business partners in the 1910s.
• Otto Hightower of House of the Dragon appears as a significant departure from the roles which made Rhys Ifans famous—especially as the role sees him as a straight-laced Manipulative Bastard (even more than Rasputin from The King's Man, as he is still mostly a Large Ham in that).
• Homeland: Melissa Benoist, an actress associated with goody two shoes roles on Glee and Supergirl makes an early career appearance as a wanton party girl having a naked audition to be part of a sheikh's harem.
• Mayans M.C. casts the famously straight edge CM Punk as a Shell-Shocked Veteran with a serious alcohol problem.
• Kiefer Sutherland is best known for playing the international law-breaking, human rights-abusing black ops agent and Bush-era conservative power fantasy Jack Bauer on 24. In Designated Survivor, he plays officially Independent but clearly progressive HUD secretary turned emergency President Tom Kirkman, a Badass Pacifist and left-wing populist dream president.
• Zooey Deschanel as Kelly Kilmartin on Physical, playing both The Rival to Sheila in the real world and the voice in Sheila's head as her mental state declines. Notably, the part had her go blonde and ditch her signature bangs in favor of '80s Hair. Deschanel said that she deliberately sought out the part because she felt that her typecasting in quirky romantic heroine roles had reached I Am Not Spock levels, especially given that she was now a 43-year-old mother of two, and wanted to play a character who wasn't as likable or heroic.
• The Patient casts comic actor Steve Carell, best known for playing Michael Scott in The Office (US) and the title character in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, as an understated and professional psychiatrist forced to counsel a Serial Killer in a serious drama.
• Homicide: Life on the Street:
  • The murderer in the episode "Full Court Press" is played by Steve Burns. Yes, that one.
  • Legendary comedian Robin Williams gives a serious (and Emmy-nominated!) performance in "Bop Gun" as a grieving father whose wife was killed during a mugging.
  • Chris Rock guest-starred as a pedophile and murderer in "Requiem for Adena".
  • Lily Tomlin played an Affably Evil fugitive and murderer in "The Hat".
  • Neil Patrick Harris as a sleazy drug dealer in "Valentine's Day".
• Oz:
  • Lee Tergesen was best known for his role in the comedy series Weird Science, making his turn as the mentally unstable convict and rape victim Tobias Beecher a notable and much darker contrast.
  • Similarly, Jon Seda, generally known for playing heroic and sympathetic characters, played a homophobic and short-tempered convict in the pilot. He wasn't without redeeming or sympathetic traits, but was generally more unsympathetic than his prior and future roles.
  • Željko Ivanek was best known for playing nice guys and Reasonable Authority Figures. His role as the cruel and spiteful Smug Snake Governor James Devlin was markedly different, and he quickly wound up type-cast as villains instead.
  • Luis Guzman, generally cast as the comic relief or generally nice characters, had a recurring role as the hardened and vicious gang leader El Cid.
  • Kathryn Erbe played a deranged and racist woman who murdered her own children.
  • Luke Perry as a repentant former scam televangelist actively trying to become the man he pretended to be.
• Longmire: Graham Greene (Actor) is known for playing noble and heroic Native American or First Nations characters, but played a recurring part in Longmire as the utterly ruthless and depraved Dirty Cop turned open gangster Malachi Strand.
• Shortly before the premiere of Roots (1977); Robert Reed and Chuck Connors appeared in another example in the 1976 American Broadcasting Company made-for-TV movieNightmare in Badham County; with Connors as a corrupt sheriff and Reed as a lecherous women's prison warden.
• Pauline Quirke, best-known as a comedic actress from Birds of a Feather, played an extremely dramatic part in Emmerdale'' as Jackson's mother during his exit storyline (which included him becoming quadraplegic following a car crash and eventually committing suicide).

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