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Ever been shocked by an actor playing two polar opposite characters back-to-back? This list showcases stars who took on wildly different roles in the same year, proving their incredible talent and versatility in cinema.
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00:00From famous cinematic chameleons who went wild even for their own beguiling standards,
00:05to relatively unadventurous A-listers who decided to surprise everyone totally out of nowhere,
00:11these 10 actors all ambitiously played completely opposed characters one after another.
00:16So I am Gareth here from WhatCulture.com and here are actors who gave two wildly different
00:21performances in the same year. Gary Oldman, Nobody's Baby and Hannibal.
00:26Granted, Gary Oldman is well established as one of cinema's all-time great chameleons,
00:31an actor who's never turned down the chance to pull an about-turn and do something totally different.
00:36And while you could cherry-pick countless two-handers from Oldman's body of work that ran totally opposite,
00:42the most extreme example surely occurred in 2001. Oldman first appeared in the dramedy Nobody's Baby,
00:48playing crass, scarcely recognisable goofball criminal Buford Bill.
00:52Except Oldman's actually positively recognisable here compared to his performance in a movie that
00:57released barely two weeks after Nobody's Baby's Sundance premiere, Hannibal.
01:02In Ridley Scott's sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, Oldman appears briefly as Mason Verger,
01:08a skin-crawlingly creepy child molester and the only surviving, albeit horribly disfigured,
01:13victim of Hannibal Lecter. Entombed within a ton of facial prosthetics, Oldman is damn near impossible
01:19to spot. All the more so given that he was even uncredited on Hannibal's original theatrical
01:24release. Beyond superficial aesthetics though, these films both see Oldman acting in very different
01:30gears. One inclined towards broad, larger-than-life comedy, the other towards human monstrosity.
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01:53Tom Cruise, Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut
01:56Though Tom Cruise enjoyed the mightiest box office success of his career with Top Gun Maverick,
02:01In purely artistic terms, there's no topping his absolutely spectacular 1999, where he worked with
02:08two legendary auteurs on two very different movies, nevertheless centred around similar themes.
02:14In the summer of that year, Cruise starred in Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut,
02:19where he played Dr. Bill Harford, a man rather ineffectually reckoning with the revelation that his
02:24wife considered cheating on him a year prior. At the end of 1999, Cruise then appeared in Paul Thomas
02:30Anderson's sprawling epic Magnolia, portraying motivational speaker and pickup artist Frank
02:36TJ Mackey, for which he received a Best Supporting Oscar nomination. On the face of it, Harford and
02:42Mackey are two very different sides of the same masculine coin. One a sexually neutered man struggling
02:47to find agency, the other a man who professes to be the epitome of it. The only real commonality of
02:53the two performances is that in both roles, Cruise plays characters who present themselves
02:57as superficially slick and suave from the exterior, only to reveal something decidedly more fragile
03:04beneath the surface. Now I've got a quick question for you, what's your favourite Tom Cruise
03:08performance? One of these or something else? Let me know in the comments section down below my friends.
03:13Jennifer Aniston Rumour Has It And Derailed
03:16Though Jennifer Aniston is unquestionably best known for her role as Rachel on Friends,
03:21and her movie career is largely defined by a glut of fizzy rom-coms, she's occasionally dipped her
03:26toe into more challenging and unexpected fare. Case in point, within six weeks of One Another in 2005,
03:33Aniston starred in two films of wildly different tones, which in turn required her to give two
03:38markedly different performances. On one hand, there's Rob Reiner's ultra-typical rom-com Rumour Has It,
03:44which didn't really ask Aniston to do anything but play her regularly charming self.
03:48But on the other hand, Aniston played the female lead in crime thriller Derailed.
03:53Because the genre leap wasn't enough of a surprise for audiences, it also turned out there was far,
03:58far more to her character than initially suggested. Ultimately, it's clear that Aniston was cast in
04:04the Derailed role precisely because of her good girl image. Having her star in two entirely antithetical
04:10movies barely a month apart was basically a marketing masterstroke. Not that it helped Rumour Has It
04:16recoup its gargantuan $70 million budget mind, Sarah Michelle Gellar Simply Irresistible and Cruel
04:22Intentions. Sarah Michelle Gellar's characters in two movies released at the start of 1999 may look
04:28superficially similar to beautiful, well-dressed brunette women, but there's a whole world between
04:33them. First up, a week before Valentine's Day, the buffy actress starred in the magical realist
04:38rom-com Simply Irresistible. Gellar played a young woman by the name of Amanda Shelton,
04:44who with the help of a magical crab, yep, you heard that right, is able to cook dishes which
04:49bring out strong emotions in anyone who eats them. Yep, exactly a month later, however, Gellar gave a
04:54far more memorable performance in an altogether more iconic movie, classic teen romantic drama
05:00cruel intentions. Here, Gellar played a far cry from the butter-wouldn't-melt Amanda.
05:05Catherine was a drug-taking, highly-sexed, conniving young woman, hell-bent on doing anything
05:10to get what she wanted. It was a performance quite unlike any Gellar had given before,
05:15and as such proved rather eye-opening for those more familiar with her vampire-hunting heroics
05:20on Buffy, let alone anyone who paid a ticket to watch her frothy rom-com jaunt a month prior.
05:24Daniel Day-Lewis is quite rightly canonised as one of our greatest actors, but back in 1985,
05:35audiences had no idea they were about to be introduced to a venerable master of the form.
05:40Day-Lewis' big breakthrough came in November 1985, when he starred in the romantic dramedy
05:45My Beautiful Laundrette, playing gay street-punk Johnny Burfoot. The same day that the film had its
05:51limited release in the US, a second movie starring Day-Lewis also hit screens, James Ivory's romantic
05:57drama A Room With A View. Here, Day-Lewis instead took the role of Cecil Weiss, the unbearably snobby
06:03pretentious fiancé of the movie's main character, Lucy Honeychurch. Day-Lewis again received wide
06:09acclaim for his A Room With A View performance, with many critics noting how both distinct roles
06:13showcased his versatility as a performer. Most famously, Roger Ebert spoke of the duality in his
06:19review of My Beautiful Laundrette, saying,
06:22The character of Johnny may cause you to blink if you've just seen the wonderful A Room With
06:26A View. He is played by Daniel Day-Lewis, the same actor who, in Room, plays the heroine's
06:32affected fiancé, Cecil. Seeing these two performances side by side is an affirmation of the miracle of
06:38acting. That one man could play these two opposites is astonishing. High praise indeed.
06:44Shelley Duvall, Popeye and The Shining
06:46After being put through near literal hell on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, it's little
06:51surprise that Shelley Duvall followed it up with something decidedly frothier, Robert Altman's
06:56infamous musical comedy, Popeye. In The Shining, Duvall played Jack Torrance's long-suffering,
07:01evidently deeply traumatized wife, Wendy. A victim with a capital V, who nevertheless musters the
07:07wherewithal to extricate herself and her son Danny from Jack's psychopathic grasp. In Popeye,
07:13Duvall also played the central love interest and mother character, albeit in distinctly less
07:18combative terms. This time as the lover of Robin Williams' Popeye, The Sailor Man.
07:22While The Shining saw Kubrick allegedly bully Duvall to the point that she had a legitimate psychotic
07:27break while shooting the movie, Duvall's work with Altman was decidedly lighter. She didn't need to
07:32brandish a knife nor play perpetually terrified, but instead sang her heart out and goofed around with
07:37one of cinema's all-time comedic greats, Jim Carrey, A Christmas Carol and I Love You Philip
07:43Morris. Much like Gary Oldman, Jim Carrey is a certified master of disguise and clearly relishes
07:49any opportunity to surprise audiences with something totally unexpected. And that he certainly did in
07:552009, when he first appeared in the black comedy I Love You Philip Morris and portrayed real-life gay
08:01con artist and prison escapee Stephen J. Russell. It was in of itself quite unlike any role Carrey had
08:07previously played, a contrast which only proved more evident when, at year's end, he starred in
08:12Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol. Even accepting that there's obviously a chasm of difference between
08:17playing a gay con man and the grouchy Ebenezer Scrooge, not to ignore the various ghosts of
08:22Christmas who Carrey also portrays throughout Zemeckis' film, the assignments were also totally
08:27different on a technical level. I Love You Philip Morris was a far more conventional acting
08:32assignment for Carrey in filmmaking terms, whereas A Christmas Carol saw Zemeckis once again attempting
08:38to push the boundaries of CGI, with Carrey delivering his entire performance through cutting-edge
08:43motion-capture tech.
08:44Natalie Portman, Garden State, and Closer.
08:47In 2004, the year before the Star Wars prequel trilogy was due to release its climatic installment,
08:53Natalie Portman made a concerted attempt to prove to Hollywood and audiences that she had true
08:58dramatic chops. Chops which weren't even remotely appreciated on George Lucas' space opera triptych.
09:04In the summer of 2004, Portman played the female lead in Zach Braff's directorial debut,
09:10Garden State, with her deeply eccentric character, Sam, basically epitomising what would in later
09:15years be termed the manic pixie dream girl. Cute, quirky, and absolutely unlike any who actually
09:21exists in real life. At year's end, conversely, Portman appeared in Mike Nichols' drama Closer,
09:27playing a decidedly more out-there and less bookish character, a former stripper by the name
09:32of Alice, and later revealed to actually be named Jane. Spoiler, sorry. For Portman to go from playing
09:37a charming girl-next-door type to a sexually confident outgoing schemer was truly head-spinning
09:43to watch, with the latter proving persuasively eye-opening enough that Portman received a Best
09:47Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her transformative work, Bruce Willis, Die Hard 2,
09:53and Look Who's Talking 2. In 1990, Bruce Willis appeared in two movie sequels which were diametrically
09:59opposed in basically every way that a movie can be. In the summer of that year, Willis reprised the
10:05role of resourceful, wisecracking detective John McClane for action sequel, Die Hard 2.
10:11At the end of 1990, he also returned to voice young Mikey in rom-com Look Who's Talking 2.
10:17There are a few obvious disparities between these two parts. One is a live-action role while the
10:22other was a voiceover, and most crucially, one sees Willis shooting terrorists in the head,
10:26and the other pits him as a baby coming to terms with the arrival of a baby sister.
10:30It's a fitting dichotomy of projects given that Die Hard initially represented a major career
10:35overhaul for Willis, breaking away from his noted comedy roles and establishing himself as a convincing
10:40everyman action hero. By starring in sequels to both a testosterone-fueled action flick and a cute
10:46family comedy in the very same year, Willis proved he could have it all, reflected by both
10:52movies proving successful at the box office. Bruce is the man, baby!
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