00:00While some will have you believe that the idea of stunt casting is in some way a dirty concept,
00:05it's no mi-coincidence that some of the most impressive movie performances of all time
00:09have come from unexpected places. You don't remember Sylvester Stallone for his action
00:14movies as much as for his quiet human performance in Copland. You might buy more tickets to Adam
00:19Sandler comedies, but it's his dramatic roles that really leave a mark. Apparently.
00:23And that's why there's such a currency in making seemingly strange casting choices or
00:28encouraging actors to really let loose and embrace the extremes of their characters.
00:32It pays off particularly well when seemingly lovely actors get right into the gritty stuff,
00:37because the darkest characters are invariably the most interesting and the most lucrative
00:42for performers. So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with Perfect Times,
00:48actors went incredibly dark. Robin Williams' One Hour Photo
00:53There's a tendency to believe that Robin Williams' film career was solely comedic,
00:57given his background as a stand-up. But after getting his start in an actual porn comedy
01:02anthology, Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses, and starring in the disastrous Popeye,
01:06it wasn't until he went more serious in 1987 with Good Morning Vietnam that he really broke out.
01:13And yes, he went far more comic in the wake of Aladdin, but he'd still made The Fisher King,
01:17Dead Poets Society, and Awakenings before then, and had obvious dramatic chops.
01:22Even in spite of all those incredible titles, though, nobody was quite prepared for how stunning
01:27he was as lonely psychopath Seymour Parrish in One Hour Photo. Chillingly one-tone in his dialogue,
01:33which was most disarming because of Williams' usual vocal flamboyance,
01:37Cy was a picture of slow-burning, not-quite-right creepiness. All restrained rage and violence,
01:43and Williams played him to haunting perfection.
01:46Do you also ever find yourself locked in the existential crisis of wanting to watch the
01:511985 classic Witness starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis, but you don't know where to begin?
01:57Because same!
01:59Ugh! Me from the future?
02:01You dummy. If you wanted to watch the 1985 classic Witness directed by Peter Weir,
02:07all you had to do was sign up to Paramount Plus using the link in the video description.
02:11This limited time offer means it's just $2.99 for two months. That's $5 off the Essential tier and $10
02:19off Paramount Plus with Showtime,
02:22which includes shows like Twin Peaks and Dexter Original Sin.
02:27Witness and Twin Peaks? Sounds like the perfect remedy for those cold winter nights we're having.
02:32I'm gonna go sign up right now and ignore this grave violation of the laws of time and space.
02:37Sounds like a plan.
02:38Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street.
02:41For all the misconceptions of him as just a romantic lead, Leonardo DiCaprio has always been more impressive in challenging
02:48roles that give him something to get his teeth into.
02:51And his turn as Jack in Titanic was very much a calculated diversion that elevated his profile,
02:56but which is in no way reflective of the rest of his career.
03:00To be fair though, it did take him a long time to fully embrace the darkness.
03:04Okay, sure, he did flirt with it, but for the most part, dark things happened to his characters rather than
03:09him orchestrating them.
03:11But that all changed in both Django Unchained, where he was outright detestable, and the Wolf of Wall Street.
03:16And it's the latter that really deserves more attention for how DiCaprio took to the darkness of his character.
03:22Sure, his Calvin Candy is a bad guy, but morality to him doesn't exist.
03:26He is his own law.
03:27For Jordan Belfort, the law and all sense of morality is something to be negotiated to his own desires.
03:32His hedonism and sociopathy ranks up there with Patrick Bateman,
03:36and the way he romanticizes his own mythology as he's writing it is as impressive as it is despicable.
03:41Jennifer Aniston, Horrible Bosses.
03:44Who would have thought that Jennifer Aniston, TV's own sweetheart Rachel Green,
03:48would end up playing a dangerous sexual aggressor who weaponizes her body
03:53and attempts to destroy the target of her lust so successfully that he tries to have her murdered?
03:58That's a hell of a change of career path.
04:00Sporting a brown wig to intentionally look different to her other roles,
04:04Aniston's penis fly trap monster is as far removed from Rachel as you could possibly imagine.
04:09She's a grotesque caricature of workplace sexual harassment,
04:12ingeniously re-spinning every reductive, misogynist trope through a female filter.
04:17That is how you hold up a mirror.
04:18She's not only amoral, but an outright criminal who drugs and attacks Charlie Day,
04:23and yet hers is arguably the most lauded performance in the entire film.
04:27Topher Grace, Predators.
04:29Topher Grace already had some precedent with playing dark characters
04:32off the back of playing Eddie Brock in Spider-Man 3.
04:35Unfortunately, because that character was a bolt-on and in no way properly conceived,
04:39he was also pretty mediocre.
04:40There have been worse performances, yes,
04:43but few have been so closely tied to why an entire fanbase felt let down.
04:47But when he turned up in the massively underrated Predators three years later,
04:51having laid pretty low in the meantime,
04:52he was still something of an unknown quantity.
04:55It was almost like Spider-Man 3 had wiped his slate clean.
04:58He plays unexpected criminal Edwin as an everyday dweeb,
05:01wrongly incarcerated with monsters,
05:03until the end sees him revealed to be a worse Predator than the titular aliens.
05:07The switch into a cold, callous psychopath is incredibly successful,
05:12and it's everything you wish he could have brought to Venom.
05:14Jim Carrey, Cable Guy.
05:16Over the years, Carrey has shown flashes of being a truly gifted dramatic actor,
05:21capturing that special brand of pathos that only comics seem to manage when they transition into straighter roles.
05:26And in The Cable Guy, he's arguably on his most impressive form.
05:30Okay, so it's not got the dramatic heft of something like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Truman
05:34Show,
05:35but his chip has way more layers.
05:37He appears to be a harmless goof,
05:39but then his reality is peeled back,
05:40and despite the comedy,
05:42we're painted a picture of a dangerous stalker shaped by years of neglect,
05:46who is willing to do anything to get what he wants.
05:48Don't let the prat fools fool you.
05:50This is a deeply dark character who plays on your perverse sympathies for him,
05:54who should have informed the Riddler way more.
05:57Kathy Bates, Misery.
05:58Thanks to Kathy Bates, a whole generation of film lovers can't look at a sledgehammer without wincing.
06:04When it came to starring in Misery, Bates was far from a well-known name.
06:07She'd struggled to break through on the big screen despite debuting way back in 1971,
06:12because, in her words, she wasn't attractive enough and made more waves on the stage.
06:16Then the Misery casting team hired her and weaponised how she looked to the most unexpected and chilling results.
06:22Bates' Annie Wilkes is homely looking and comforting,
06:24the kind of face you'd absolutely want to greet you after a serious car accident.
06:28She seems gentle and amicable, excited to meet her favourite author but most concerned to nurse him back to health.
06:35And then the facade is peeled back brutally and you see the real face of the monster.
06:40She's a serial killer with multiple victims to her name,
06:43including 11 babies, whose intent for him was always nefarious.
06:48And Bates' flip from homely to fiery is precisely why it's still her most defining performance.
06:54Macaulay Culkin, The Good Son
06:55As the tagline for The Good Son cheerfully proclaims,
06:59evil has many faces.
07:01But you still would never pick the angelic face of Home Alone's pre-teen hero as one of them.
07:05Remarkably though, Macaulay Culkin's turn in The Good Son was carefully engineered by his father
07:10to try and develop his son's range for roles.
07:12Ridiculously, the script was picked up by Fox after they'd ignored it for years,
07:16when Home Alone and The Silence of the Lambs did well,
07:19and the studio believed that they could make a Frankenstein's monster out of both.
07:23Culkin clearly had the thirst for violence, as Home Alone had proven,
07:27but his turn in The Good Son is surprisingly great.
07:29The film's not great, but his blend of cherub-like innocence and cold, casual fascination with death
07:35makes him the perfect precursor to a character like Norman Bates.
07:39Kevin Costner, Mr. Brooks
07:41Kevin Costner has always been one of those dependably sympathetic heroes,
07:46the kind you want to see reconnect with the ghost of his father,
07:48or to recapture his lost sporting excellence,
07:51or to not needlessly kill himself in a tornado to turn his son into Superman.
07:55He boasts this sort of intangible fatherly essence that makes him delightfully relatable.
07:59Like Tom Hanks.
08:01But with Mr. Brooks, Costner swung to the dark side,
08:03and while the film was largely overlooked, Costner's Earl Brooks is a genius creation.
08:09He's a normal, everyday guy, respected in his community,
08:13and the head of a loving family who just so happens to be a serial killer who keeps bloody souvenirs.
08:18Like Dexter, if he was a proper family man.
08:20The role plays on every other pillar of his career,
08:22using the audience's expectations against them, and it's all surprisingly effective.
08:27Emma Watson, The Bling Ring
08:28Darkness doesn't always have to manifest itself in murder or outright malevolence.
08:33It can be gnawing, insidious, and a creeping toxicity
08:37that personifies everything wrong with an entire vapid subculture.
08:41And as Emma Watson proved with The Bling Ring,
08:43it can come from the most unexpected of sources.
08:46Having made her name as Hermione, the goody-two-shoes hero of the Harry Potter universe,
08:50Watson took a leaf out of Daniel Radcliffe's book on avoiding career typecasting
08:54to play the anti-Hermione.
08:56As Nikki, she's the ultimate narcissistic vapid valley girl,
09:00hungry for fame and almost enthusiastic about being able to step on others' heads to get there.
09:04She manages to be both brainless and calculating.
09:07You are so worried.
09:07That's a Delta St.
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