I'm going to present this in a list format, counting down what is now the 6 actors who've undergone drastically different roles to what they've normally been associated with. I'll probably make a sequel to this eventually.
Being an actor is probably one of the most challenging and interesting careers a person could have. All through an actor's life, they get to embody a slew of different people, tell a hundred different stories and sleep with potentially dozens of people and have it be seen by millions of moviegoers on a giant silver screen that reflects not just light and color, but T and possibly A (I'm looking at you, Anne Hathaway... No, I'm really looking... *Pant, pant*).
But then there are those actors who we've fallen in love with since our childhoods, and a certain image of them never seems to escape our minds. It takes seeing those actors in a different light in order to shake that preconception and, potentially, our whole preconception of movies in general... or perhaps we'll just go "WTF?" with one eyebrow raised.
Gene Wilder
Most popularly known for his eponymous role in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (He played Willy Wonka, not the chocolate factory, for clarity's sake). He delighted children all over the world with his quirky and yet oftentimes mad performance as the infamous chocolatier. Part musical, part childlike cinematic whimsy, the film went on to be nominated for a number of awards and achieved critical acclaim and all that good stuff. Given Willy Wonka's benevolent motives, who would think the actor who embodied him could be capable of anything more hardcore than that of a mailman saving puppies from certain death?
The snozberries taste like vagina.
But he also appeared in...
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
The 1989 comedy of murder, sex and people with now-unfortunate-yet-back-then-hilarious disabilities featured Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, which would be the penultimate effort by the duo and their (arguably) most controversial movie yet: A blind man and a deaf man are accused of murder and have to work together to prove their innocence. The movie is full of innuendo, profanity and, most importantly, laughs. In this movie, Gene Wilder isn't the cute and cuddly confectionist we've all come to know and love. Here he is an embittered, defensive and hilariously sarcastic deaf man who, despite his disabilities, is capable of delivering the kinds of laughs you might expect from Seth Rogen, Jason Segel or other people who can hear.
Wilder and Pryor work hilariously off one another and every supporting character only highlights this fact. There's even a scene in which he threatens a naked woman with a penis gun in his pants. You can't make this stuff up, folks.
"CAN YOU HEAR MEEEEE!?!?!"
So engulfed by his role was Gene Wilder, in fact, that he went to the NY League for the Hard of Hearing to study for his role, and he was assigned to his future wife, Karen Boyer. That tidbit in itself sounds like a winning formula for a romantic comedy. That settles it. This man is a comedic genius in all aspects of life.
