Sometimes all it takes for an actor to massively sway public opinion is a single role. Redditors are sharing which actors changed their minds because of one such role.
The discussion began in r/movies and has since blown up to nearly 600 upvotes and over 700 comments. The highest-upvoted comment concerns Internal_Travel6344’s reassessment of Jim Carrey after seeing him in The Truman Show: “It was the first mostly dramatic role I saw from him and was blown away by how good of a dramatic actor he can be.”
Many of the other reassessments follow the same formula: a once-goofy actor takes a serious role and is no longer considered goofy. Redditor bigtallguy chose Will Ferrell for his role in Stranger Than Fiction, as the ordinarily comedic actor “playing the character straight worked really well, and resulted in a delightful movie about the value we give to art when compared to life.”
“His movies are usually such stupidly over-the-top comedic idiocy,” KhaoticMess said of Ferrell before seconding his performance in Stranger Than Fiction as revelatory.
Adam Sandler haters became lovers after seeing him play dramatic roles in Reign Over Me, Uncut Gems, Punch-Drunk Love, and several others.
The reverse happened with Ryan Gosling. People saw him as a dramatic actor until The Nice Guys, in which he became “one of our greatest comedic actors,” as BoomerangOfDeath put it.
“The bathroom stall scene is probably my favorite physical comedy scene of this century,” wrote YoungMuppet about Gosling’s performance in the 2016 comedy.
We say “No more Mr. Nice Guys” to the actors who started goofy and went serious, but we welcome the Nice Guys who started serious and went goofy.