Morgan Freeman
The Type: The Wise Old Sage
As Seen In: Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, Se7en, Kiss The Girls, Deep Impact, Along Came A Spider, Bruce Almighty, Million Dollar Baby, Batman Begins, Evan Almighty, The Bucket List, The Dark Knight
Against Type? Freeman has played similarly cartoonish villains in Wanted and Lucky Number Slevin , but his duplicitous turn in Gone Baby Gone is the equivalent of James Cromwell’s LA Confidential monster in terms of playing against type.
Cameron Diaz
The Type: The Sweet, Funny Babe
As Seen In: The Mask, My Best Friend’s Wedding, There’s Something About Mary, Charlie’s Angels, The Holiday, What Happens In Vegas, Knight And Day
Against Type? Her performance as the shy, mousey Lotte in Being John Malkovich is a world away from the gorgeous, good-natured ditz roles she often finds herself coasting through.
Jennifer Aniston
The Type: The Hopeless Romantic
As Seen In: She’s The One, Picture Perfect, The Object Of My Affection, Along Came Polly, The Break-Up, Marley & Me, He’s Just Not That Into You, Love Happens, The Switch
Against Type? Aniston has made a career out of playing winsome but romantically thwarted girlie-girls in a wealth of vapid, romantic fluff, which is a shame given the potential she showed in The Good Girl . Her brilliantly deadpan turn as a dispirited store clerk makes you wonder why she hasn’t taken some more adventurous career choices to offset the endless slew of rom-coms.
Elijah Wood
The Type: The Earnest Nerd
As Seen In: Flipper, The Ice Storm, Deep Impact, The Faculty, Lord Of The Rings, Everything Is Illuminated
Against Type? To give him his due, Wood has made a fairly decent fist of trying to escape his LOTR image. Setting the risible Green Street to one side, he’s been creepy in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and downright terrifying as Sin City ’s murderous Kevin. He’ll always be Frodo of course, but it’s good to see him giving something else a try.
Drew Barrymore
The Type: The Wholesome Girl Next Door
As Seen In: The Wedding Singer, Never Been Kissed, 50 First Dates, The Perfect Catch, Music And Lyrics, Lucky You, He’s Just Not That Into You
Against Type? For someone who was such a wild child in her youth, it’s baffling to see Barrymore taking the Aniston route into rom-com irrelevance. Her acerbic role in Donnie Darko was a welcome reminder of what she’s capable of. Let’s hope her new career as a director might lead to similarly edgy material.
Cary Grant
The Type: The Charming Smoothy
As Seen In: Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, My Favourite Wife, The Philadelphia Story, To Catch A Thief, North By Northwest
Against Type? In Hitchock’s Suspicion , his usual charm takes on a distinctly caddish edge, with the script originally revealing his character to be a killer. However, studio bosses at RKO were concerned at shattering Grant’s heroic image, and Hitch grudgingly agreed to change things around. Boooo!
Joan Allen
The Type: The Ice Queen
As Seen In: Pleasantville, The Bourne Supremacy, The Upside Of Anger, The Bourne Ultimatum, Death Race
Against Type? As a supremely talented actress, Allen can play anything, but she seems to be at her most comfortable playing it chilly. That said, her role as one half of a hippy-ish couple in Off The Map is about as far-removed as Bourne nemesis Pamela Landy as it’s possible to get.
Vince Vaughn
The Type: The Fast-Talking Wiseass
As Seen In: Swingers, Made, Old School, Blackball, Starsky & Hutch, Dodgeball, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up, Four Christmases, Couples Retreat
Against Type? Despite having carved out a niche as a wise-cracking funnyman, Vaughn has played a couple of straight roles, notably as a cop in The Cell , and a nutcase in Domestic Disturbance . And of course he was also Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho, but the less said about that the better.
Donald Pleasence
The Type: The Creepy Villain
As Seen In: Dr. Crippen, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Will Penny, Wake In Fright The Eagle Has Landed, You Only Live Twice, The Mutations
Against Type: Pleasence’s casting in the Halloween series as the creepy but heroic Doctor Loomis stemmed a long sequence of films in which he played a series of mad professors and homicidal loons. His sympathetic turn as a blind POW in The Great Escape was another notable departure from his usual celluloid villainy.
Tom Cruise
The Type: The Cocky Hero
As Seen In: Risky Business, All The Right Moves, Top Gun, The Colour Of Money, Cocktail, Days Of Thunder, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, Knight & Day
Against Type: Whilst playing the villain in Collateral might have raised a few eyebrows, there’s still plenty of the old Cruise charm on display throughout Michael Mann’s film. A more startling departure can be seen in Spielberg’s Minority Report , where his sombre policeman is a drug-addicted loner, long-estranged from his wife and child, and entirely lacking in the self-confidence Cruise’s other characters usually have in abundance.
