Every dramatic actor wants to try comedy. Every comedian wants to try drama. For decades, dramatic and comedic actors have swapped their comfort zones and challenged themselves with roles that are light years different from what they usually play.
Comedians going dramatic have proven the most successful. Many comic personalities have made the jump to drama. Robin Williams, Jamie Foxx, and Michael Keaton are a few of the best examples, with Williams and Fox winning Oscars for their serious work in the films Good Will Hunting and Ray, respectively. There are many great dramatic turns from comedic actors and actresses that have opened the eyes of their fans and taken them to new heights in their professions.
Albert Brooks in Drive
Albert Brooks was always a smart and popular stand-up comedian who turned to a respected career as a writer/filmmaker. Brooks' films made good use of his self-deprecating humor and a skewed outlook on the human condition. His sharp wit and undeniable ability to make audiences laugh hard and often made him one of the great comedic filmmakers of his era.
In Nicolas Winding Refn's brutally violent 2011 crime thriller Drive, Brooks shattered his comedic persona by playing a ruthless and violent crime boss who betrays the title character and kills an employee who betrayed him with a salad fork. It was a thunderous performance full of danger and violence, showing a much darker side to the comedian's acting skills.
Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show
Cloris Leachman is famous for her comedic roles. As a co-star on the hit 70s show Rhoda and through her work in the Mel Brooks films such as Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety made her a comedy treasure.
In 1971, Peter Bogdonavich cast the actress in what would be the role that would bring Leachman the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, "Ruth Popper' in The Last Picture Show. Leachman played a lonely and sexually needy middle-aged housewife who begins an affair with a recent high school graduate. The actress played the role with an inherent sadness and sweetness that she had not been allowed before on screen.
Richard Pryor in Blue Collar
By 1978 Richard Pryor was already a comedy legend. Although he had acted in a few dramatic films, Pryor was always the comic relief. In 1978, Paul Schrader gave the comedian a powerful role in an important film. Blue Collar was the story of three friends who worked in a Detroit auto plant.
Schrader's film dealt with racism within the workplace and how the three friends (two black and one white) were pitted against one another by the higher-ups. Pryor more than held his own alongside his co-stars Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto. His performance was as fierce and wild and potent as his stand-up material.
Sarah Silverman in I Smile Back
Sarah Silverman is considered one of the best working comedians of her time. Through her routines she makes audiences face their own prejudices. While sometimes controversial, the comedian is respected by critics and amongst her peers.
In 2015's I Smile Back, Silverman played a housewife and mother who is a drug addict whose behavior becomes more and more unhinged and begins to destroy her world. Silverman was praised for her brave role and fearless performance, as the actress bared her soul and went all the way for her character.
Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
The wild, crazy, and brilliant mind of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was the perfect match for the wild, crazy, and brilliant mind of Jim Carrey. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind found the comedian as a man who is rethinking having the memory of his girlfriend erased after their relationship sours.
Carrey dug deep and moved audiences and critics earning Carrey a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor and kickstarting the next stage of his film career as a dramatic actor. The character is one of Charlie Kaufman's most moving and relatable.
Jackie Gleason in The Hustler
Jackie Gleason will forever go down as one of comedy's greatest performers. His classic TV show The Honeymooners is unmatched in its hilarity and his role as "Sherriff Beauford T. Justice" in the Smokey and the Bandit films is a comedy icon.
For the Paul Newman pool film The Hustler, Jackie Gleason played true life pool great "Minnesota Fats". Gleason was excellent in the dramatic role using his face and methodical movements to portray a man who knows he is always the best in the room. Where, as a comedian, Gleason is always using his large body to move around, this film utilized his silent and mellow persona to great effect.
Jerry Lewis in The King Of Comedy
When one thinks of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, one doesn't think of Jerry Lewis. 1982's The King of Comedy changed that when Scorsese cast Lewis in a purely dramatic role as a talk show host who is kidnapped by a dangerously unstable man played by Robert De Niro.
Lewis shows a man who is frustrated and unnerved by his fame so he keeps himself locked away as much as possible. Once he become's stalked by De Niro's "Rupert Pupkin", we see a man enraged and defiant, even once he is kidnapped by Pupkin and his accomplice played by Sandra Bernhard. Lewis's performance was praised by critics, with most claiming he would win an Oscar. Unfortunately, the nomination never came.
Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People
"She can turn the world on with her smile" were the lyrics to Mary Tyler Morre's TV show. In Robert Redford's directorial debut Ordinary People, Moore played a woman so horribly closed off from her emotions and you almost never caught her smiling.
The film was a commercial and critical hit that won 4 Oscars. Moore was nominated for her gut-wrenching portrayal of a woman who has lost the will to love or find sympathy. It was a towering work from one of our most versatile actresses.
Lily Tomlin in Nashville
A favorite on the comedy circuit, a close friend and colleague to Richard Pryor, and already a big star with her own comedy sketch show on CBS in the early 1970s, Lily Tomlin branched out and became part of the ensemble cast in Robert Altman's 1975 masterpiece, Nashville.
Tomlin played mother to a deaf daughter and wife to a busybody and neglectful husband. Her character falls under the spell of a singer played by Keith Carradine. Tomlin was praised for her committed and believable portrayal of a woman betrayed by her emotions.
Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple
Whoopi Goldberg had already swept Broadway with her one-woman show, becoming a comic sensation. Her first film would be a serious drama, Steven Speilberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's The Color Purple.
Goldberg proved perfect for the cinematic incarnation of "Cellie", a woman whose life is filled with tragedy and loneliness but who finds her way to peace in her final days. The actress was heartbreaking in her lead role, portraying a woman of inner power who finds courage in her survival. For her tremendous work, Goldberg was nominated for Best Actress at the 1986 Academy Awards.