This piece was written by Sir Simon Milligan
I have the utmost respect for actors and actresses who accept roles outside their comfort zone. It takes a lot of guts to stretch those acting muscles and try to avoid being typecast. The results aren’t always great, but I do commend the effort.
My favorite example of this is Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight. Ledger never really had much experience playing any type of villain before, so when this casting announcement was first made public, let’s just say I was extremely skeptical. He’d mostly been known for playing “good guy” characters or appearing in rom-coms, and I figured there was no way he could pull this off. But from the moment I saw the first Dark Knight trailer, I was prepared to change my tune. Ledger turned in not just a great performance as the chilling lunatic, but one of my all-time favorites – period. The Academy Awards agreed and gave Ledger the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that year, a very rare feat for a performance in a “comic book” film.
Prompt: What’s your favorite “against-type” performance in film?
