16 Actors Who Played Roles No One Expected to See Them In

Some actors play certain roles so well that we simply can’t imagine them as anyone else. For example, for the audience, Andrew Scott will always be the insidious Moriarty from Sherlock, Anthony Hopkins will be a psychopath with chilling eyes, and Elijah Wood will stay the long-suffering hobbit who carries the ring to Mordor. Still, sometimes they have certain parts in movies and all their fans have left to do is pick up their jaws off the floor.

Bright Side compared actors’ most unexpected roles with their ordinary ones. In some cases, we could hardly recognize our favorites, in others, we couldn’t believe they could play these characters. Moreover, 2 famous actors suddenly decided to act in a Russian film — you’ll see them at the end of the article.

1. Tom Hardy

The bad guy with a disfigured face in Peaky Blinders and the romantic handsome man in the movie This Means War.

2. Steve Carell

A mentally unstable rich man in Foxcatcher and a comical manager in The Office.

3. Tim Roth

The courtier dandy in Rob Roy and the fishy man in The Hateful Eight.

4. Elijah Wood

A guy with bad luck in the horror-comedy Come to Daddy and the cute hobbit in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

5. Andrew Scott

An autistic scavenger in Steel Country and a criminal genius in Sherlock.

6. Anthony Hopkins

The Scandinavian God Odin in Thor and a serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs.

7. Woody Harrelson

A weird bodyguard in Anger Management and a strict policeman in True Detective.

8. Matt Damon

An eccentric villain in The Zero Theorem and a brave hero in The Great Wall.

9. Rowan Atkinson

A sad priest in Keeping Mum and a funny spy in the comedy Johnny English Strikes Again.

10. Chris Evans

A poor rebel in the Snowpiercer drama and the superhero in the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

11. Daniel Craig

The bank robber in Logan Lucky and an intelligence agent in Spectre.

12. Christoph Waltz

The freaky hermit in The Zero Theorem and the charming bastard in Inglourious Basterds.

13. Alexander Skarsgård

A balding loser in The Hummingbird Project and the muscular macho man in The Legend of Tarzan.

14. Keanu Reeves

A 2-faced agent in A Scanner Darkly and a fighter against evil spirits in Constantine.

Bonus #1: Norman Reedus

Daryl Dixon, a character in The Walking Dead who is loved by many, played the main role in the little-known Russian thriller Moroz po kozhe. The movie’s producer and scriptwriter is Andrei Konchalovsky. Reedus’s screen partner in this movie is Kseniya Buravskaya.

Bonus #2: Christopher Lambert

The famous actor who played the immortal Connor MacLeod in the Highlander film series played in Konstantin Khabensky’s movie called Sobibor. Lambert got the role of the key negative character — the cruel German officer Karl Frenzel.

Do you remember other actors who surprised you with their weird look in a movie or with an atypical-for-them role?