High Grant as Fletcher in The Gentlemen.

Posted 4 months ago

Daniel Craig in Layer Cake. Felt like an audition for Bond.

Posted 4 months ago

Tom hiddlestone as Loki, he originally auditioned for the part of Thor but thankfully they saw the opportunity.

Michael Sheen as president Bartlett in the west wing

Viggo mortenson in green book

Vince Vaughn in brawl in cell block 99

Posted 4 months ago

You are all wrong it’s Michael St. Michaels

Goes down like most threads on here……

Posted 4 months ago

Christophe Waltz in Inglorious Bastards

Posted 4 months ago

Daniel Bruhl in Rush was outstanding, not sure if that counts as unexpected.

Posted 4 months ago

Oh yeah, not a film but David Strathairn in the Expanse- every scene he was in just sparked. Another humdrum dialogue scene with Dawes or Holden or whoever? Send in Klaes Ashford, spouting incomprehensible space-gibberish and bird noises. I want some sort of insane piratey crossover with him and James Delaney just being mental and unintelligble at people.

Posted 4 months ago

Tom Cruise in Collateral. He should play the bad guy more often.

Posted 4 months ago

Ade Edmondson’s brief cameo in ‘Return of the Jedi’. Class.

Posted 4 months ago

Many of the suggestions so far seem like “casting decisions” rather than “unexpected casting decisions”.

I thought the archetypal unexpected casting decision was Henry Fonda as the bad guy in “Once Upon a Time in the West”.
Fonda was one of the generation where people kind of believed that the actor was like the characters he played. He’d always been a stand up guy, and to have him appear as the villain in a Leone Western was genuinely shocking at the time.

Posted 4 months ago

Alan Rickman as Severus Snape

Never mind the bloody kiddies, wizard film…

Alan Rickman as Hans Bloody Grubber!

Can’t believe all the die hard love for Bruce, and Alan gets overlooked. I’d argue Rickman as the baddie actually made that film what it was at least as much, if not more than Willis…

Posted 4 months ago

I’d argue Rickman as the baddie actually made that film what it was at least as much, if not more than Willis…

Rickman was excellent as always, but it’s hardly an “Unexpected casting masterstroke” to have him as the bad guy. The first thing I saw him in was a BBC (I think) Romeo and Juliet, where he played Tybalt.

Posted 4 months ago

Alanis Morrisette as God in Dogma was brilliant.

Posted 4 months ago

Karl Urban in Dredd got it 100% right.

Hugh Grant in Paddington 2.

Posted 4 months ago

@donks he’d been in American Graffiti just before.
Christopher Eccleston in the reboot Dr Who.
Cher in Mask
Chris Pratt in GotG.

Posted 4 months ago

Edward James Olmos as Adama in Battlestar Galactica – the whole cast of BSG was what made the reboot work.

Posted 4 months ago

The first thing I saw him in was a BBC (I think) Romeo and Juliet, where he played Tybalt.

I wanna see that!

Posted 4 months ago

IMDb: : The BBC Television Shakespeare
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14801528/

He was in 1 episode of this…

Posted 4 months ago

Rickman was excellent as always, but it’s hardly an “Unexpected casting masterstroke” to have him as the bad guy. The first thing I saw him in was a BBC (I think) Romeo and Juliet, where he played Tybalt.

Well Die Hard was first actual film he was cast in, and his Tybalt was almost a decade earlier, I’d call it an “unexpected Master stroke” bit of casting. Imagine it’s 1986ish you need to cast a German baddie in a Christmas action movie to antagonise Bruce Willis, and you go and pick some British actor who’s never done a film before but has a decade of British Stage and Telly Drama. In that context Rickman wasn’t exactly the obvious choice.

A bit like Ian Holm before he did Alien, you wouldn’t have picked him for a Sci-Fi horror movie his film and TV roles had mostly been historical/war Dramas, but he was a bloody brilliant homicidal android. Fast forward 20 odd years and he was getting cast in fifth element and then as a bloody Hobbit, I don’t reckon those later casting decisions would have happened without that one slightly ‘off-type’ role years before…

Lots of things seem obvious with 20/20 hindsight…

Posted 4 months ago

Gary Oldmam in True Romance. Thinking about it, Val Kilmer in the same film playing Elvis not long after starring as Jim Morrison.

Posted 4 months ago

Alan Rickman? Absolutely stole the Robin Hood movie. He played the comedy of the part so well. Not what I expected from him or the movie

Honourable mention to Sean Connery as King Richard 😂

Posted 4 months ago

Hugh Grant in Paddington 2

Excellent shout, sent himself up brilliantly

Posted 4 months ago

Hugh Grant in The Gentleman was an amazing casting decision

Second only to Cruise in Tropic Thunder

Posted 4 months ago

@easily.

Fair comment, but I’d argue that there are deliberate casting decisions that far surpass the filmmakers expectations.

Tv series, but Robert Knepper as Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell was a casting masterstroke.
I don’t think anyone anticipated how charismatically he could portray the ultimate anti-hero. Genius.

Posted 4 months ago

It’s ages since I’ve seen it so it might have aged badly but, following up Arnie’s performance in the first film by casting Danny Glover in Predator 2.

Posted 4 months ago

Steve Coogan in Philomena

Posted 4 months ago

Oh.

Freeze Frame. Psychological thriller starring… Lee Evans. Plays it totally straight and he’s brilliant in it.

Posted 4 months ago

Hard to imagine Lee Evans being brilliant in anything,if it cancels out some of his (IMO) many crap performances then that’s a good thing.

Posted 4 months ago

Marky Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights

Lance Armstrong in Dodgeball

Donald Trump in Home Alone 2

Posted 4 months ago

Robert Knepper as Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell was a casting masterstroke.

Yeah, Prison Break was a preposterously silly show, but it had a great cast. T-Bag and Haywire were great characters.

Posted 4 months ago

Cougar
Full Member
Oh.

Freeze Frame. Psychological thriller starring… Lee Evans. Plays it totally straight and he’s brilliant in it.

Wow, forgot that one.

Made me think of Ross Noble as the clown in Stiches. Great film.

Anyway, I’ve ticked Googling ‘ross noble clown horror’ off the bucket list.

Posted 4 months ago

Hard to imagine Lee Evans being brilliant in anything,if it cancels out some of his (IMO) many crap performances then that’s a good thing.

Hence, “unexpected.”

I like Lee Evans as a comedian, most of his acting roles not so much. His performance in Freeze Frame is light years away from anything else he’s done.

Posted 4 months ago

the Robin Hood movie

You mean The Sherif of Nottingham, starring Alan Rickman?

Hugh Grant

In most things he’s done lately, I’m forced to admit. British Scandal for instance.

Posted 4 months ago

Comics doing dark roles

Robin Williams in One Hour Photo and Steve Carell in Foxcatcher both give pretty good performances.

Honorable mention also for Charlize Theron in Monster. Transforming herself into a unlikeable and unattractive character

Posted 4 months ago

Another vote for Hugh Grant in the Gentleman. Somewhere above Martin Freeman was mentioned. I can usually take him or leave but thought he was fantastic in The Responder when the standard choice might have been someone like Steven Graham.

Posted 4 months ago

Oh, and Will Ferrell in Everything Must Go.

Posted 4 months ago

I’ve no idea whether it’s a masterstroke or not but I just tripped over this unlikely trailer:

Robin Williams in One Hour Photo

Dead Poet’s Society.

Posted 4 months ago