Comment Party: Against-type casting... pro or con?
Wednesday, August 5, 2020 at 7:10PM by Nathaniel R
Mo: He came slammin' into my shop...
Freddie: Who struck the first blow?
Whitey: The first blow -- what are you kidding? -- there was only one blow.
Do you enjoy against-type casting? I couldn't stop thinking of this practice while watching Boys Town (1938) the other night to fill in a notable Best Actor gap (Spencer Tracy won the Oscar as do-gooder Father Flanagan who started the titular home for abandoned / delinquent boys). In the film Mickey Rooney's "Whitey" tests Father Flanagan's theory that 'there are no bad boys' and his tough guy shtick feels very over the top especially coming from a teen star who was then best known for boisterous enthusiasm in comedy and song and dance. But then a funny thing happened. Halfway through the picture, while still bristling against this relentless posturing, it suddenly worked for the movie; OF COURSE Father Flanagan is right and Whitey's tough guy callousness is a performance. This little jerk acts tough but he's actually a softie beneath the sneering.
Do you like watching actors playing the opposite of their typical persona, whether or not they succeed? What's your go to example of this sort of thing.
1938, Boys Town, Mickey Rooney, casting
Reader Comments (41)
I'm definitely into it, but of course I can't think of any SPECIFIC examples right now so I'll just say I always hope every actor gets a chance to play a really awesome villain ESPECIALLY if they often gravitate towards the hero/nice guy or girl characters.
Whether or not they are successful it at least shows an actor is willing to stretch and try to expand their craft by playing against type. Some actors only become successful playing the same role over and over again in different movies so I can't blame them for trying new things.
Not exactly the question, but made me think of this: when it comes to biopics, I think physical resemblance is overrated and often distracts from the actual performance. So I appreciate against type casting for projects like that, not just going for the most shallow and obvious appearance but instead aiming for something different in the characterization.
So, yes: I like when performers take risks and surprise me.
I'm all for it! Given Hollywood's habit for putting their actors in boxes and only offering roles based on their "type" (unless that "type" is "can play anything", like Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis), it's always a treat to see what an actor can do when challenged.
My go-to example is always Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (most people point to Carrey in The Truman Show, but I feel that one was Carrey finding new layers within his type, while in Eternal Sunshine he's stripped of everything that makes him "Jim Carrey"). I also think Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt is a terrific example (he has several great performances from before he perfected his "Jack" personna, but this is one he did when the personna was rock solid), or Robin Williams in Insomnia or One Hour Photo (both of which challenged his personna of being hilarious but harmless). Those are the ones that come to mind.
What a great idea for an article.
Yes love against type performances but they are a mixed bag,The best ever at the time was Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People.
Gregory Peck in Duel in The Sun. Perfect against-type performance.
I'm always up for checking out an actor who is trying something outside their expected persona. The enjoyment of that is really reliant on the performer though.
For example when they made Double Indemnity both Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray were reaching way outside what until that point they were known for, Stanwyck did comedies but she was best known for the plucky sometimes tough but always good-hearted heroine and MacMurray the facile light comedic leading man but both met the challenge beautifully.
Same for Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West and Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo along with many others.
But then there are cases such as Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York or Russell Crowe in Les Miz where the performer isn't up to the requirements of the role and it's just painful.
Any Adams in The Fighter felt very against type at the time, though she’s since gone much further. We had only really see her play sweet characters before.
My fave performance in this category is Jodie Foster in NELL. It not only went against her persona, but is the literal reverse of how she usually approaches acting. Watching an actress who is virtually peerless at methodical, intellectual attacks into cerebral characters let go of that control and try something purely instinctual was thrilling. She not only put herself up for public ridicule (which she, in my mind shamefully, received), but she had the intelligence and bravery to know that her old tricks (which, again, are staggering) wouldn't work for the character of the movie. Even if you don't think the performance plays, she deserves points for trying something 180 degrees different.
My brother couldn't get through Sense & Sensibility because he kept expecting Alan Rickman to act like Hans Gruber or the sheriff of Nottingham. ("When's he going to pull out his sword or his gun?") Important to note: My brother was an adult when he watched the movie. Meanwhile, I think Rickman gives one of his best performances in S&S.
Jason Statham- SPY. Okay, maybe not so much against type casting as much as a deconstruction of his on screen persona. But it works brilliantly well with the most hilarious results.
I have really enjoyed Hugh Grant stepping away from the adorable, bumbling romantic in his recent work. I adored loathing him in A Very English Scandal and belly laughing at his over the top villain in Paddington 2.
I love watching actors play against type! It's always a joy to see an actor stretch their limits and test out new things. A recent go-to example of this would be Octavia Spencer in LUCE. It's one of her best performances, and one of the few projects that has allowed Spencer to not only play so many different shades and emotions within a complex character, but also to be an active player in the plot of the film.
I also love it when actors fully lean in to their star persona/strengths and still manage to create a full character out of it (Julia Roberts is one of my favourite examples of an actor doing so consistently AND successfully).
Last century, Denzel Washington got most of his roles, and earned all of his Oscar nominations, playing the nobleman, either fictional or real (Steve Biko, Private Trip, Malcolm X, Rubin Carter).
And they are his best roles (particularly Malcolm X and Rubin Carter). But Oscar responded to him playing against type, as the morally compromised Alonzo. And fair enough, because he did it well (in an otherwise average movie), and was the most deserving winner in his category that year.
Tilda Swinton in Julia is the first performance of this ilk that came to my mind. It’s such a departure from her icy heroines and villainesses - truly the hottest of messes. Also, I think I’m one of the only people in the world who prefers Natalie Portman’s devil-may-care rambunctiousness in Vox Lux to her admirable but stilted take on Jackie Kennedy.
Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco would seem like an obvious casting choice. But given his history of having played mobsters and gangsters that ranged from the shrewd Michael Corleone to the mercurial Tony Montana, with a determined Carlito on the side... and the host of other showboating characters that he's played in other non-mafia films, his pathetic and timid but deeply poignant Lefty in Donnie Brasco is an against type casting that always wowes on every viewing.
I agree with the Mary Tyler Moore comment above. Excellent performance, against type, should have won the Oscar.
How about Charlize Theron in Monster? Simply delicious...
It just delighted me to see two of my favorite performances cited one after another (by markgordondonuk and cal roth) as prime examples of against-type performances that really really worked.
Mary Tyler Moore was just stunning in "Ordinary People" - a genuinely daring departure from her sunny TV image. I'd have given her the Oscar that year no question.
And I've always loved Gregory Peck in "Duel in the Sun". Would never have imagined he'd be so good (and so damn magnetic) playing a cheerfully randy, ethics-free womanizer. Of course, he was still pretty new then; his image was yet to be set in stone. But this performance was a far cry from the noble upstanding characters he eventually became associated with. Later attempts to play against that prototype ("Moby Dick", "The Boys from Brazil") were far less successful.
I'd add Dick Powell's name to any list of actors who found renewed success while moving from one screen image to a radically different one. As a cheerfully cheeky tenor in a host of Busby Berkeley style musicals in the 30's, he reigned as a major box office star. Then reinvented himself in the mid-40's as one of film noir's most convincingly sardonic protagonists. After which he built a very successful third act for himself as a director and producer in film and TV.
The term triple threat seems inadequate to describe this guy and his multi-faceted career.
Lorraine Toussaint as Vee in Orange is the New Black is the best example of an actor playing against type and succeeding. The menace she depicted was new and the sexuality with the topless scene sealed the deal.
Despite Showgirls being the opposite of Jessie Spano for Elizabeth Berkley -- it has defined everything she's part taken in since.
I like it a lot when this works. And probably because of her recent death my mind is immediately going to Olivia de Haviland in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.
There would be no better example for agains-type casting than Liz Taylor in who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf
Oh snap, I would’ve stopped by to comment earlier, but I thought Nathaniel’s invisible troll moderation was still enacted. (Invisible as in by the time I read any article there was zero evidence of such comments. Either your moderation is already great, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, or maybe you were just sensitive to opposing opinions?)
It's a hard one to nail down. Some performers are so chameleon-like that it would be hard to pin down what 'against type' means for them. I'm thinking of examples like Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy or Sarah Paulson in...anything.
It's a small role, but Gemma Jones in God's Own Country springs to mind, as does Michelle Williams in I Feel Pretty.
Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.
I’ve just watched “Dark City” (1950) for the first time, and I guess Charlton Heston didn’t have a type when he made that film, but I thought that was one of his better performances. I would also cite Mia Farrow in “Broadway Danny Rose” and Katharine Hepburn in “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”.
Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Meryl Streep in She-Devil and Death becomes her
Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder
John Travolta in Hairspray
Javier Bardem in Skyfall
Cameron Díaz in Being John Malkovich
Sacha Baron Cohen in Hugo
Arnold Schwarzennegger in Maggie (is this one, underrated!)
Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD
Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China
Daniel Craig in Knives Out
Andie McDowell in Ready or Not
Tom Selleck in In & Out
... just to name a few.
Yes.
A. If it's an actor I already admire, I love the ambition.
B. An against type performance can sometimes unlock an actor for me in a way their usual work doesn't.
C. It also tells me that a director is willing to think outside the typical casting cohorts, which I like.
I love all these examples and this thoughtful response. But i guess none of you have seen BOYS TOWN because nobody has mentioned the leaping off point. If you have, what did you make of Rooney in it?
Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose
I have seen Boys Town and Rooney was fine in it but I have to qualify that by saying that I have limited patience for him as a performer.
That unctuous asshole vibe was always present, bubbling just below the surface of even his most earnest and sincere performances. He was a talented man but the stink of self satisfaction frequently permeated his work especially in his youth. Even in his films with Judy Garland he's mugging for all his worth while she's just relaxed and natural.
I've seen Boys Town. Mickey Rooney had a propensity to go over the top in his big moments, but that wasn't unusual for the time. And I remember his performance more than Spencer Tracy's, so there's that.
My head is still trying to process Jean Hagen going from The Asphalt Jungle to Singin’ In The Rain. You see her in Asphalt and think that she’s a typical, put-upon girlfriend of a film noir loser. Then comes SITRain with an about-face comic, dingbat tour-de-force and you just marvel ‘Where did That performance come from?!?’
I generally enjoy watching performers in against-type roles, and sometimes wish more actors would make more of an effort to stretch themselves (Jennifer Connelly, something where she's not off her Zoloft contemplating suicide at the edge of a pier).
Of course, for every one of these great against-type performances, you end up with something like Tobey Maguire in 'The Good German', which is still single handedly one of the worst performances I've ever seen. (To be fair, Maguire is talented, but this was a colossally misjudged case of miscasting if I've ever seen one.)
This may be more controversial than intended but Robin Williams in One Hour Photo.
Actresses like Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet have fun playing with type of characters. It's most fun when someone who has built a person decides to just pierce it. Like the example of Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine. That movie is a true masterpiece for this and many other reasons.
I LOVE when actors play against-type role
I'm not sure if I totally understand the question because if we talk about actors doing something diferent that their persona, the one that is away from the cameras, I can not think someone else than Gustavo Sanchez Parra. He usually play rude guys but in real life is a very calm person, actually in interviews his voice sounds softer than the one we hear on his work on screen.
If we talk about actors doing something differente that they used to, the exemple mentioned before of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is perfect. Practically one is playing the role that the other use to perform.
I'd give a shout-out to Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys. He loses all the of the snarky cynicism he's known for and instead gives us a schlubby loser you actually care and feel for. One of the very best against-type castings I've ever seen. And one of the very best performances of the past few decades. I'm still puzzled by the fact that Douglas missed out on what would have been a very deserving Oscar nomination.
Also: I agree on Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. I adore that performance!
Monica Vitti's shift from Antonioni's bleak dramas to comedienne in Modesty Blaise was a headspinner, as was Sophia Loren's turn from sex symbol to anguished mother in Two Women (for which she deservedly took home the Oscar).
I also thought of Amy Adams in THE FIGHTER (went in skeptical of the casting, but damn if she didn't knock my socks off - she was my pick for best supporting that year), and Mary Tyler Moore's ice queen in ORDINARY PEOPLE is the gold standard for against-type casting.
Seeing Claudio's post on Dion Beebe also reminded me of another - Meg Ryan in IN THE CUT. She was excellent, and both she and the film remain seriously underrated.
Just watched this film due to this great article (I love it when actors play against type). First Mickey Rooney-starring film I’ve seen and I was pretty amazed by his performance. That shift in his performance after that one scene really was a perfect contrast to the other side, and his composure during that last one was just heartbreaking. Thanks once again for this article!
There are a few things to consider when casting an anti-type coreball role. On the one hand, it can be a great way to explore different character types and see what works best for the story.