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Tom Hanks Syndrome
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The casting opposite of Leslie Nielsen Syndrome. It's a story found time and time again: a successful comedian, usually a film actor, suddenly tries to play against type and stars in a big, heavily dramatic movie, playing a dramatic role and generally acting all dramatic. Oddly enough, this shift has a pretty high chance of actually working, and becoming a permanent shift in the actor's roles. The first question a viewer might have would be, "Why does this happen so often?" Well, As You Know, True Art Is Angsty. Many comic performers begin to feel they cannot get the acclaim and respect their dramatic counterparts do unless they start doing more dramatic films. In addition, comedic films almost never win Oscars, leading stars to resort to more dramatic fare. It's instructive that most examples are film stars, since television's Emmys have separate categories for comedy and drama. The second would be, "You say this has a good chance of working. How can that be true?" Well, what most non-actors aren't aware of is the fact that comedy is more difficult to act in successfully than drama. A mediocre performance is much more readable/watchable in a drama than in a comedy, because once comedy starts to fall apart, it's very hard to pull it back together again. Hence, a sufficiently good comic actor usually has the talent — the knowledge of their body, of timing, of the effects of subtle gestures — that can serve to make them brilliant at serious works as well. In some cases, when an actor does this long enough and successfully enough, they can become better known as a dramatic actor than a comedic one (just look at the Trope Namer). Compare Cerebus Syndrome, where a series does this rather than an actor. As the examples below show, this doesn't always work well, but when the actor in question manages to do a really good job, it can lead to a surprised reaction: He Really Can Act! Contrast Leslie Nielsen Syndrome, where a successful drama actor becomes an equally successful comedian. Can be related to Comedy Ghetto. When including examples, don't add natter saying they weren't funny in the first place. |
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Onetime Talk Soup host Greg Kinnear has trended more towards serious film roles, including murdered comic Bob Crane as a troubled sex addict in Autofocus. Even in Little Miss Sunshine he was somewhat pathological. He has always retained his comedic edge, however. He hilariously spoofed his Oscar-nominated performance in As Good As It Gets on Saturday Night Live by claiming he lost the actual Oscar win because of a breakfast scene where he "uses the wrong hand" to eat his breakfast. If he had used the other hand, he would have won. | |
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Mind you, Sandler had dipped into more serious fare with Reign Over Me and (to a lesser extent) Punch-Drunk Love. However, it could be argued that those performances, while very good, were more Sandler doing more serious versions of his usual characters, while Gems is one of the few times that he's played a role that's out-and-out different to his usual roles. | |
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Kal Penn also rose to fame through Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle as well, but has largely put aside comedy roles as a popular supporting character on House (before they Dropped a Bridge on Him). He has followed up with some puzzling choices, like playing a random mook in Superman Returns and briefly working for the Obama Administration. | |
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Before Oscar nominations and critical acclaim in stuff like Titanic, Inception, The Departed, and The Aviator, he had a recurring role on Growing Pains. | |
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Imitation Of Life: Lora has a lot of success on Broadway as a comic actress. She insists on playing a dramatic part, much to the displeasure of David, who is both her lover and the writer of all those comedies. It works, as she gets even more acclaim and lands a part in an Italian art movie. | |
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Sullivan's Travels: A director of comedies wants to make a serious film O Brother Where Art Thou, and by the end of the film realizes that his comedies do have just as much of an impact on society as dramas do. | |
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Miley Cyrus tried to do this with the movie adaption of the Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song which though a critical dissapointment was succesful at the box-office, she went to comedy with So Undercover (which would not see release until 2013) and drama again with the remake of LOL neither of which were particularly well-received, though she was praised for her guest-starring role on Two and a Half Men. In the end, she has currently abandoned her acting career to focus on her music. | |
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From Fred Stone's dramatic performance in Alice Adams (though not in a starring role), one might not suspect that he had been famous for starring in a long series of musical extravaganzas (a forgotten genre of shows very similar to English pantomimes), starting with the 1903 production of The Wizard of Oz, in which he played the Scarecrow. | |
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Jay Roach was usually associated with directing goofball comedies like the Austin Powers trilogy, Meet the Parents and the sequel, Dinner for Schmucks and The Campaign. Over time though, he's seems to have taken a gradually serious turn with biopics like Trumbo and Bombshell (2019) as well as HBO political dramas like Recount, Game Change, and All the Way. | |
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Amiah Miller who became famous for War for the Planet of the Apes was mostly stuck with one-time roles in sitcom shows often playing a mean-hearted bratty girl. In her breakout role, she plays a mute, delicate angel. | |
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In one episode of The Bernie Mac Show, Bernie, a famous stand up comedian/comedy actor, wanting to prove that he's a serious actor, was cast in a movie where he played a legendary football player. When Bernie shows his wife and friends a copy of the near finished film, they compliment his acting skills, until the movie gets to the part where the character becomes imobilized, and they laugh at the fact that he looks so ridiculous trying to act as if he were having a stroke. | |
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Throughout the run of Married... with Children, Ed O'Neill tried to show he had range by taking on various bit parts in dramatic films. This was a bit of a struggle as everyone saw him as Al Bundy (to the point where his role in Flight of the Intruder was recast because test audiences burst out laughing when he appeared). He finally hit an inflection point when he took on the role of Joe Friday in a reboot of Dragnet. Although the show was short-lived, his performance was praised and he started being taken seriously as a dramatic actor. This led to a recurring role on The West Wing and a well-received run on the critically acclaimed John from Cincinnati. He even became a part of David Mamet's stable of actorsnote They got to know each other through their mutual passion for Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu. He eventually got to show his full range as a comedic and dramatic actor on Modern Family where he could go from being the butt of the joke in one episode and drive an emotional plotline the next. | |
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That Thing You Do! was a successful comedy post-Philadelphia. However, he was not only a supporting cast member but also the director. | |
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Nothing in Common was Hanks' equivalent of Woody Allen's Annie Hall: a comedy that was interjected with real pathos and drama, and the Deconstruction of a Manchild having to deal with serious life issues. | |
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Since his movies before Gangs of New York were all roles where his characters' youth — or at least appearance of it — were important to the part, it's more that he took years to be accepted as an adult actor. The Man in the Iron Mask, which he starred in right after Titanic, flopped. | |
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Jeff Portnoy in Tropic Thunder joined the filming of the titular movie because he was tired of being pigeonholed into low-brow Toilet Humor comedy roles (his previous claim to fame is a blatant parody of The Nutty Professor (1996), with way more fart jokes). Tugg Speedman is a lesser example, with his prior films mostly being schlocky action-comedies, until he tried to play an Inspirationally Disadvantaged character in an Oscar Bait film, then a serious war biopic. | |
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Lee Evans, a madcap comedian known for his physical humor and over the top routines. He has had several parts in movies such as There's Something About Mary, The Fifth Element and MouseHunt, where he continued to use his energetic, wacky performance. Then in 2004 he played the role of a paranoid conspiracy theorist and murderer in the Psychological Thriller Freeze Frame. Also in 2004, his performance of Clov (opposite Michael Gambon as Hamm) in Matthew Warchus's production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame was critically well received. | |
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Jackie Gleason, famous for portraying Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, gave a widely acclaimed performance in the drama The Hustler (1961) for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He was also praised for Requiem for a Heavyweight. | |
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Several Hong Kong actors have moved on from otherwise lighthearted comedies to full-blown critical acclaim in this manner. Case in point, the two leads of Infernal Affairs, Tony Leung and Andy Lau — both even co-starred in a '70s period dramedy, "The Royal Tramp", and Andy's Guiness Record for starring in the most movies was a direct result of padding his resume with dozens of comedic roles. Recently, one such actor, Alfred Cheung, who made his name as the Plucky Comic Relief, even won an award for his first serious role. It should be noted here that Andy and Tony first got into show business as part of a Five-Man Band of teen idols, while Alfred... let's just say he's got the Plucky Comic Relief look down pat. |
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The Velvet Touch: Valerie is a Broadway actress who has starred in a long series of hit comedies produced hy her lover, Gordon. Valerie has gotten tired of comedy and wants to leave Gordon's employ to star in a heavy drama, Hedda Gabler—and also she wants to break up with Gordon romantically as she's fallen in love with another man. Gordon refuses to let her leave him either professionaly or personally, and there's a violent confrontation. | |
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Another British example is Bill Oddie, formerly one third of The Goodies, was also a member of the Cambridge Footlights. Now he's known for presenting Springwatch and other nature shows. | |
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Prior to playing Philip Marlowe in the 1944 film Murder, My Sweet, Dick Powell was best known for starring in lightweight musicals. Indeed, the film was originally named Farewell, My Lovely (as was the novel it was based on), but was changed so that it would sound less like a musical. Because of his success in this role he played several more such roles and became better known for them than for he had been for his musical roles. | |
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Meta example: The classic movie To Be or Not to Be (both versions) is a dramedy about a comedian who wants to play Hamlet who is actually played by "a comedian who wants to play Hamlet" — Jack Benny in the original and Mel Brooks in the remake. The comedian does play Hamlet — very, very badly. So badly that in Mel Brooks' version, he needs to be fed the lines from the "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy of Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet. "Meta" in that the comedy genre expands to take on a serious subject: the original movie is a very funny comedy about Hitler's invasion of Poland. |
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Cited in 30 Rock. Tracy is afraid of losing his youthful edge because "Do you know what happens to a comedian when he gets old and loses his audience? He starts getting offered serious roles!" Also parodied after Tracey wins an Oscar. He gets sick of being viewed as a serious actor and wants to be seen as a crazy comedian again, so he tries to lose the respect of the media. It backfires when all of his crazy antics are misinterpreted as insightful commentaries on society. Then Jack Donaghy tells him all he has to do is go back to acting on television, and no one will ever respect him again. Tom Hanks himself makes a cameo, telling other A-list actors Tracy is back on TV and no longer in their ranks. He then starts humming the theme song to Bosom Buddies. |
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He has arguably come full circle since then, appearing in The Whole Nine Yards and its less-successful sequel The Whole Ten Yards amongst others. | |
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After leaving Saturday Night Live in 2002, Will Ferrell branched out to more dramatic roles, such as Stranger Than Fiction, Winter Passing, and Everything Must Go, but has mostly stuck with comedy. Ferrell went back to drama for the TV movie A Deadly Adoption, which also stars Kristen Wiig, another former SNL cast member. |
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Batman: The Animated Series: Baby-Doll. The backstory of Mary Dahl has her leave the successful family sitcom where she was the main character so that she could pursue a career as a serious dramatic actress. This failed spectacularly because nobody would take her seriously, partially because of a genetic disorder that stopped her aging at about age five, and partially because she just wasn't a very good actress. She tried to go back to sitcoms, but by this time, she had already earned a reputation as a pain to work with and her career just ended, driving her to take on her Baby Doll persona as a criminal. | |
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Early film star Bert Lahr, best known as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, deliberately invoked this trope. After wrapping Wizard, he realized that he'd typecast himself and, rather than stay in Hollywood, headed east for Broadway, where he starred in and won rave reviews for the American premiere of Beckett's absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot. Lahr later joked that he left the silver screen because "there weren't a lot of roles for lions." | |
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Diana Ross, largely known as a singer and occasional guest-star on variety shows, attempted to do this by lobbying extremely hard for the role of Dorothy in The Wiz; historian and author Pauline Kael cites this as "the strongest example of sheer will in film history." Unfortunately, in addition to a notoriously troubled production, Ross herself was largely considered a terrible choice for the part — she was far too old to play a little girl or even a teenager—which forced the creative team to do extensive rewrites of the original script — but still acted hysterical and childish throughout the film. The Wiz was a massive box-office bomb, and nearly every critic blamed Ross for it, which put the final nail in her coffin as a serious actress. | |
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Maybe Demme (see above) learned from Martin Brest. Brest hit big with the 80's landmark comedy Beverly Hills Cop with Eddie Murphy. He then got an Oscar nomination in 1992 for Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino. | |
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Hanks has also hosted Saturday Night Live eight times, six of them from 1985 to 1992 (roughly one a season). He even has recurring characters, cameos on some latter-day episodes, and, like Christopher Walken, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin, has his own "Best Of" clip show special. | |
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Stardust Memories: Sandy Bates wants to make more serious films. A Martian's advice? "Tell funnier jokes!" | |
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And Person of Interest further reinforces that for Manheim, with her role of the Noble Demon government official known as Control. | |
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Person of Interest | hasFeature |
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And then proved in The Sixth Sense that he could handle non-action dramatic roles just as well. | |
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Reboot (2022): Reed quit the cheesy sitcom Step Right Up to take serious roles in dramatic films and plays. He considers his comedic roots to be Old Shame, and only returns to the show's reboot when he believes it's going to be more high-brow. When Gordon wants it to be shallow comedy again, he nearly quits again, until he realizes how badly he and his castmates need the job. | |
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He'd already done several non-action dramatic roles including In Country, Mortal Thoughts, 12 Monkeys, and Pulp Fiction, he just keeps having to prove it. | |
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Family Guy hit the nail on the head in its first episode (which Seth MacFarlane had already used as a joke in his student film, "The Life of Larry"), when Peter mistakenly assumes that Philadelphia is in the same vein as Hanks' earlier work and laughs uncontrollably at the line "I have AIDS". | |
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Stand-up comedian and actor Kevin Pollak has several comedy movies and shows under his belt, he is perhaps best known for playing Lt. Weinberg in the suspenseful drama A Few Good Men and Todd Hockney in thriller The Usual Suspects. He has arguably come full circle since then, appearing in The Whole Nine Yards and its less-successful sequel The Whole Ten Yards amongst others. |
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In Show People, slapstick comedy actress Peggy Pepper graduates from the Comedy Ghetto and starts getting dramatic roles under the name Patricia Pepoire. It actually turns out bad for her career, as audiences find the "Patricia Pepoire" persona to be phony in comparison to plain old Peggy Pepper. | |
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Interestingly, though Metcalf went through this trope in film and television, her theatre experience has always tended toward the dramatic. She got her start as a member of Chicago's legendary Steppenwolf company, and has played many serious roles in everything from Edward Albee's Three Tall Women (which won her a Tony) to the stage adaptation of Stephen King's Misery. | |
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Chris Weitz started his early career working with his brother Paul directing films like American Pie and Down To Earth (2001), which were decidedly comedic in tone. However, after they wrote About a Boy together, Chris parted ways with his brother and his solo directorial efforts, like A Better Life and Operation Finale, are serious dramas containing little of the comedy that he became known for. By contrast, Paul has been able to stick with comedy films outside of a couple exceptions. | |
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Her current starring role in the sitcom comedy Young & Hungry seems to be a return to form though as she's playing a food blogger who gets a job as a personal chef, a role she's entirely unqualified for (and of course, hijinks ensue). | |
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