16 Times A Major Star Got Weird With An Unhinged Supporting Performance
It's all too easy to fall in love with a movie star's, well, movie-star performances. Embodying a character who carries an action franchise or has sheer charisma can cement an actor's legacy. Everyone loves an Ethan Hunt, a Jason Bourne, or a Black Widow.
But sometimes A-list stars take on a supporting-actor role that's completely different, and it's exciting to watch them go off the deep end and succeed.
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Tom Cruise, often christened a savior of the multiplex, has made a habit of starring in blockbuster-worthy films carried by his unbridled megawatt movie-star charisma, or working primarily with auteurs if he wants to stretch his abilities. But after 2005 saw public perception of the star plummet, following a series of bizarre behaviors, it seemed like audiences might never get a glimpse of the stranger side of Cruise again. That is, until Ben Stiller's 2008 film Tropic Thunder.
The movie is simultaneously epic war film parody and absurdist satire of Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Cruise plays a blustering, ham hock-armed studio executive with a penchant for explicit hip-hop and fits of rage. It’s a hilarious performance in its bizarre fearlessness: a total inversion of Cruise's prototypical screen presence, but also a knowing wink at the public’s perception of his own strangely humorless real-life persona. Not only was the turn unexpected, but it was also a large part of Tropic Thunder’s critical adoration, even earning Cruise a Golden Globe nomination.
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By the time of Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys release in 1995, Brad Pitt had already established himself as a major rising star, asserting his leading-man status in pictures like Interview With the Vampire and Legends of the Fall. But with his role as Jeffrey Goines in Gilliam’s brilliantly wackadoo adaptation of La Jetée, Pitt proved that underneath the pretty face and swaggering charisma was something far more strange and unhinged.
Pitt’s Jeffrey is a manic anti-capitalist mental patient who may bear a deeper connection to the titular 12 Monkeys virus that decimated the world population before the start of the time-hopping science-fiction film. Up until that point, Pitt’s roles had (with the exception of True Romance’s delightfully dumb stoner roomie Floyd) fallen under the purview of cocksure young gun or purely swoonworthy romantic lead, employing the actor’s massive natural charisma and stunning looks for maximum effect. 12 Monkeys, though, hints at Pitt’s far more interesting future as an off-kilter supporting performer, subverting his movie-star wattage in unique and powerful ways. He received his first Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor, for the role.
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Bill Murray is a certifiable Hollywood legend, and an actor capable of changing the tenor of a film simply by walking in frame for a moment at a time. That holds as true as it might anywhere else in the bowling-based comedy cult-classic Kingpin. Murray plays vain, brutish, and obnoxious bowling bad-boy Ernie McCracken, a rival of Woody Harrelson’s Roy Munson (as well as Munson’s Amish protege Ishmael, played by Randy Quaid).
For McCracken, Murray dials his normally charming boorishness up to unbearable but hilarious levels, and is easily a key element of what makes Kingpin a lasting comedy diamond-in-the-rough in the minds of passionate fans.
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Leonardo DiCaprio had long since left his boyish heartthrob days behind upon the release of Django Unchained in 2012, but not once had the megastar committed to being an out-and-out villain. When Django debuted, however, the actor’s wildly unhinged and evil turn as plantation owner Calvin Candie put to bed any undue concerns that DiCaprio might not be capable of such an absurdly unlikable character.
The genius in Leo’s vision of Candie comes in its embrace of the actor’s naturally imperturbable charm. Candie is engaging, entertaining, legitimately funny, and brimming with confident swagger. There’s an intoxicating element to his schtick that makes the sudden and sharp swerves into unrepentant evil and sadism all the more horrifying. It’s a performance far removed from DiCaprio’s more prototypically heart-meltingly romantic characters, or emotionally tormented protagonists. His every hateful wish is respected, praised, and encouraged. Calvin Candie, for all of his grins and mannered overtures, is a true-blue monster.
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Jennifer Aniston spent the vast majority of her career shiny-white-smiling and wisecracking her way to the moniker of “America’s sweetheart” thanks to her role as Rachel in the sitcom phenomenon Friends. Throw in her permanence as a tabloid fixture, and you have all the makings of a marquee idol when it comes to potential movie roles, which makes her turn as the sadistic and sexually hyper-aggressive Dr. Julia in Horrible Bosses so strange.
Dr. Julia threatens to inform the fiancee of Charlie Day's Dale that they have been sleeping together unless he actually agrees to sleep with her. Sure, it’s a ridiculous premise, but Aniston’s performance is up to the task, toeing the line of abject ridiculousness (to admittedly hilarious effect) at all times. Aniston makes Dr. Julia crude, rude, and alarmingly sexual to the point of absurdity. It’s a well-tuned performance that stands out in a film full of highly energetic and expert comedic performances.
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Kiefer Sutherland’s brand of on-screen charisma has always been somehow off-putting, yet familiar. Stand By Me immediately understands the natural danger inherent in Sutherland’s persona by pitching him as the movie’s primary antagonist, but The Lost Boys really nails Sutherland’s appeal: twisting that danger into something attractive and magnetic rather than simply aggressive. As Dr. Daniel Schreber in Alex Proyas’s Dark City, Sutherland achieves a successful performance by burying that still-present danger in layers of broadly comic affectation - a stutter, a predilection for pregnant pause that might make Alan Rickman blush, a hideous, swooping hairstyle.
Yet Schreber is still, somehow, horrifying. His complicity in the subjugation of his fellow humans in the titular dark city speaks to a serious evil, or at the least, perversion of fear. It’s a standout performance in a career full of successful villainous turns, not to mention a late-career reinvention as elder statesman action star.
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Like a certain brand of similarly, staggeringly handsome performers before him (think Alec Baldwin, Jude Law), Colin Farrell was initially pitched as a traditional leading man, which led to a number of stilted headlining appearances. Given the opportunity to investigate something a little more off-kilter, however, or even chew some scenery, Farrell shines.
That mentality is at work during his prosthetic-laden turn as Batman villain the Penguin in Matt Reeves's bluntly named The Batman. Sure, Farrell has enjoyed a prolonged, and deserved, career renaissance in the past decade, but The Batman is a performance audiences might not have been lucky enough to receive had the actor’s public stature not been so secure. Farrell chomps on the scenery with glee, making the Penguin a sarcastic “New Yawk” gangster amalgamation that brings much-needed levity to the movie’s grim proceedings.
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Hugh Jackman is no stranger to theatricality. A renowned (and trained) song-and-dance man, Jackman feels equally at home hosting the Oscars, going berserk as Wolverine, or belting out a show tune in The Greatest Showman. But as the legendary Blackbeard in Joe Wright’s Pan, Jackman takes theatricality to unhinged, near-camp levels. Like some vampiric interpretation of Rasputin, the actor makes Blackbeard a ghostly-pale, black-clad goober, hissing and spitting in a wildly oscillating (vaguely Eurocentric) accent.
It's easy to understand where Jackman’s going - there are threads that tie the actor’s villainous version of Blackbeard to the dandyish Captain Hook of the Disney animated adaptation, and the aforementioned folkloric Eastern European historical malefactor Rasputin. There’s a world where the titular Greatest Showman’s performance works in the context of the film, but unfortunately for Jackman, his Blackbeard just contributes to wild tonal inconsistencies in Pan.
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The idea of Tilda Swinton turning in a strange performance is nothing, well, strange. The actor has made a name by taking on ethereal, bizarre, and downright frightening parts with ease. What is unhinged, though, is Swinton’s hilarious take on the spray tan-soaked editor of a men’s magazine in Judd Apatow's Trainwreck.
Amy Schumer stars as a magazine writer with commitment issues, but Swinton’s performance as her boardroom-alpha boss Dianna is the film's true highlight. Swinton is somehow more unnerving in a spray tan and blond ombre than she ever has been ensconced in robes with magical powers, or buckteeth and Coke-bottle glasses. Imagine seeing a vampire at the beach, judging the swimsuit choices of their fellow sand-bound visitors, and you might have a solid idea of what it feels like to see Swinton as Dianna.
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Chris Pine is born to be in movies - he’s almost offensively good looking, and brimming with an easy charisma that lights up the frame the moment he enters it. It's Pine's movie-star wattage that makes his turn in Horrible Bosses 2 as one of the eponymous horrible bosses so effectively hilarious, and bizarre.
Pine twists the version of his natural charm audiences are so accustomed to (and in love with), keeping the casual confidence and beaming smile, but imbuing both with a sense of ignorant menace and cruelty. It's the same bravado-fueled sadistic privilege one might find in the worst kind of stuffed-up private-school bully. And for an actor best known for embodying heroic types? A truly nuts undertaking.
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Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is an epic ode to the Hollywood of old, and stuffed to the gills with marvelous actors giving outsized, peculiar, or special performances. But one sticks out for unexpected reasons: Tobey Maguire’s turn as James McKay. Maguire plays the drug-addicted gangster as if he’s dripping in slime, his hair greased to a flat cap, his skin a mottled gray and seemingly always covered in a grimy film of sweat. It’s a total left turn from the fresh-faced hero in Spider-Man.
For a film as willfully depraved and visually jarring as Babylon to feature a performance that manages to out-weird the movie itself is impressive, and speaks to Maguire’s underrated talents, especially when it comes to taking on villainous parts.
Totally unhinged?Meryl Streep is near-infallible as a performer. A certified legend, she has been nominated for 21 Academy Awards and won three. Even in her worst movies, Streep is typically praised for elevating the material. But the almost mythical performer’s turn as Topsy in director Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns may take the cake as her weirdest.
Topsy is Mary Poppins’s Eastern European cousin who runs a repair shop in London. Streep appears for a grand total of one sequence, draped in patterned scarves, a silly hat, and wearing a shockingly ginger wig. She then sings a goofy song called “Turning Turtle” in which she informs her cousin that the item they’d hoped to repair might not be worth it after all, while sliding across the room atop a ladder or crouched on the ceiling above. It's an altogether disconcerting appearance that, thanks to Streep’s natural charms, still manages to be somewhat likable.
Totally unhinged?Cate Blanchett comfortably resides in the same rare air as actors like Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, or Daniel Day-Lewis, capable of doing anything in a staggeringly excellent fashion. But even performers whose careers and talents put them squarely in the “GOAT” debate sometimes pull double duty with bizarre performative tangents. Blanchett is no different, and Cinderella finds her doing her best inversion of old-Hollywood glamour, curdled by bitterness and loathing. It’s equal parts Regina George in Mean Girls and Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, dialed up to fairy-tale appropriate 11.
Yet Blanchett’s talent is too great to simply reduce the legendary evil stepmother (here called Lady Tremaine) to a mere caricature. There’s a thin but noticeable underpinning of grief and sadness lingering under the bitterly sweet veneer of the stepmother’s exterior. It's a wonderfully unexpected bizarro turn from an actor normally known for her prestige projects.
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Bradley Cooper is an undeniable star in front of and behind the camera. Typically Cooper takes the frame as a relatively straightforward leading man, but his role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza as real-life 1970s film producer Jon Peters finds the actor stepping back into the supporting space. Cooper plays Jon Peters - a producer, former hairdresser, and one-time boyfriend of Barbra Streisand - like a manic ball of rage, spinning like a Tasmanian devil who leaves chaos and destruction in his (very loud) wake.
The intense performance, alternately comedic and intimidating, is a return to Cooper’s early days of playing comic blowhards with anger issues, just in a much more grounded space - which makes it all the more unhinged.
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Scarlett Johansson crossed the bridge between indie darling, heartthrob, blockbuster heroine, and respected dramaturge in relatively short order, moving up through the ranks of Hollywood A-listers with ease. But even the most well-calculated upward trajectories have some weird outliers, and in comic book writer Frank Miller’s superhero neo-noir and directorial debut The Spirit (2008), Johansson found hers.
Johansson plays Silken Floss, the femme fatale henchwoman to Samuel L. Jackson’s villain The Octopus. Floss is innocent to the point of absurdity, or at least, in a fetishistic manner. To say Johansson’s purposefully hammy performance falls out of line with the rest of the movie would be untrue, as The Spirit is an altogether hammy affair. And if the movie, though visually stunning, doesn’t quite work, it isn’t because of Johansson, who’s bizzaro take on a noir trope is a highlight.
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I Feel Pretty follows Amy Schumer as Renee, a woman whose crippling insecurity vanishes after an accident alters her perception and gives her the idea that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. Michelle Williams is the movie’s standout, though, as Avery LeClaire, the CEO of the cosmetics company Renee works for.
Williams makes Avery a breathy, baby-voiced priss, incredibly out of touch with the common woman, a cutthroat corporate boss, and… a shockingly human person with their own insecurities (despite commanding a building full of people). It’s an overtly silly performance, far removed from the damaged and depressed emoting seen in most of Williams’s roles. For that, despite its weirdness in her filmography, the role remains a thoroughly engaging and refreshing one.
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