12 Actors and the Roles That Changed Their Careers

Image via Complex Original

We think of Bogart as the tough man with a stiff drink and a dilemma, but that's because we think of him in movies. Bogart started on the Broadway stage. When he was offered a part in the play "The Petrified Forest,” in which he played an escaped murderer, he was relieved. "It marked my deliverance from the sleek, sybaritic, stiff-shirted, swallow-tailed 'smoothies' to which I seemed condemned to life," Bogart stated in his biography, which was written by Jeffrey Meyers.

“The Petrified Forest” had an initial 197-show run. Warner Brothers bought the rights to make a movie and wanted to retain the star of the play, Leslie Howard (Bogart had a supporting role). Howard insisted that Bogart be cast in the same stage role but Jack Warner wanted the more cinematically established gangster actor, Edward G. Robinson. From England, Howard cabled: "Attn: Jack Warner - Insist Bogart Play Mantee - No Bogart - No Deal - L.H." And 15 years of cinematic history was changed from that wire. Bogart was a murderer in the film version of The Petrified Forest, then he was a gangster in Angels With Dirty Faces, followed by a hardened detective in The Maltese Falcon.

Bogart's performance in The Petrified Forest was a revelation at the time. It was an announcement of a new, charismatic—but rough—actor. If you watch it now, you wait patiently for Bogart to appear, as he doesn't hit the screen until midway into the film. But this is the first of many scowls and condescending remarks that we'd come to love thereafter. And Bogart never forgot how he got there. He named his only daughter Leslie Howard. The kid stays in the picture, indeed.

The haircut that launched a thousand Instagrams—you may not know Louise Brooks, but you may have encountered stills of the silent-film actress, and certainly you've encountered her Lulu bob 'do. You should also seek out her biography by Barry Paris, which details her in-control sexuality, her hatred of Hollywood, and her inability to be boxed in. Not that Brooks was an attention-seeker. Her icon status came from 1950s France and 1990s America, well after she retired from acting. After losing on a career gamble, she lived in obscurity until she was beckoned to move to Rochester, New York, where celluloid was processed by Kodak, so that she could be close by while her films were being restored and give historians insight into the silent-film era.

So who was Brooks? A Kansas woman with a helmet haircut who head-butted Hollywood and refused to sign their contracts after Paramount withdrew their promise of a raise because they had to put money into upcoming sound pictures. She ended up in Germany, where she starred in two massively influential silent films made by G.W. Pabst: Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. In Pandora's Box she’s Lulu, a freewheelin' flapper mistress of a newspaper publisher. Lulu, like Brooks, has razor sharp, short bobbed hair. She cuts against the norm. When she is charged with his accidental death (where he asks her to kill herself) she has to cut her hair and attempt to fit in with other, normal women with disastrous results.

Cage is the actor who launched a thousand YouTube mash-ups of questionable actor embellishments. It all had to start somewhere. Of course, it all started with an early film (for Cage) directed by Cage's uncle, Francis Ford Coppola (the same guy that did The Godfather and Apocalypse Now). Who's going to say "no" to their nephew when their nephew says, “Hey, multiple Oscar-winning uncle, wouldn't it be a great idea for my character's voice to sound like Pokey, the clay horse-friend of Gumby?” Most people. And yes, that was his actual inspiration.

But the kid stayed in the picture. And even though his performance (as a late-1950s high school student whose girlfriend, 1980s abused housewife Kathleen Turner, has traveled back in time 25 years to get her life right) is incredibly bizarre and out of place in this movie, we can't help but say thank you to FFC for not standing up to his nephew. Otherwise we might not have gotten decades of Cage-infused grand oddball gestures in everything from Moonstruck to Face/Off, Raising Arizona, The Wicker Man, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. 

Pop quiz, hot shot: You’ve got an audition tomorrow morning, what do you do to prepare for it the night before? If your name is Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson then you get into a drunken brawl with three men at a house party. Obviously. And it’s not like Gibson was fighting off work at the time, he’d only starred in one movie, Summer City, two years prior. Gibson went to the Mad Max audition anyway—swollen and black and blue in the face—to provide friendly support to his theatre friend (and co-star from Summer City) Steve Bisley. The casting director told Gibson to come back in three weeks because they were going to need a variety of “freaks” for the dystopian sci-fi motorcycle flick.

Gibson came back in three weeks with a healed and pretty face and director George Miller instead asked him to audition for Mad Max, the iconic road warrior that would catapult him to international stardom.

Jackson shot to mega-stardom with Pulp Fiction (1994, happy 20th birthday!), but Jungle Fever saved his career before it derailed. Jackson had put in a solid decade’s worth of work in small, scrappy roles (including, Mister Señor Love Daddy, the DJ in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Stacks in Goodfellas). But by his own admission, he was drunk and high for most of it. Eventually, Jackson would go to rehab. Two weeks after completing it, Lee had a plum part for him: playing an addict named Gator in his Right Thing follow-up, Jungle Fever.

Jackson was so achingly good in Fever that the Cannes Film Festival created a special Best Supporting Actor laurel for him that year (and it has not been given since). And the offers came flooding in. Jackson followed Fever with True Romance, Jurassic Park and Pulp Fiction (which was specifically written for Jackson). Over 130 appearances later and Jackson became the biggest box office grossing actor of all-time (and he’ll continue to distance himself from everyone else with all the upcoming Marvel films). By his own admission, being sober allowed him to probe deeper into Gator than he’d ever been able to get with a character before. And that’s the triple truth, Ruth.

Lee has acted in 281 films. To neophyte film fans he’s probably best known as the evil Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. But Lee was the statuesque go-to actor for the Hammer Films catalog horror revival of the ’50s and ’60s. It all started by playing the manufactured monster in The Curse of Frankenstein.

Lee had been acting for a decade prior to receiving the part that marked him an internationally sought-after horror icon. But he had small, tiny parts. At 6’5” he was told that he was “too tall”​ to be an actor. On film sets it might’ve made him appear to be a monster to other, notably shorter co-stars. So a monster Lee became, even more terrifying than his creator (Peter Cushing) because he lorded over him. Lee followed that up by becoming Dracula the next year in Hammer’s Horror of Dracula, a role that he’d revisit seven times. Lee would also play a mummy (The Mummy), a sadomasochist (The Whip and the Body), a cult leader (The Wicker Man), and a Bond nemesis (The Man with the Golden Gun), before playing the evil wizard of Middle Earth.

It’s probably the most indelible role on this list, but Pacino as Michael Corleone almost never happened. Director Francis Ford Coppola fought against Paramount, who wanted the non-Italian looking Ryan O’Neal or Robert Redford for the role of Michael, the son of a mobster, who himself had to step up and become a mobster.

For one of the most acclaimed films of all-time, Coppola worked under some of the most intrusive circumstances ever. Paramount was always threatening to fire him. According to Coppola’s DVD commentary, they even had a shadow director on set, ready to take over when needed if Coppola was fired during the day.

Paramount was never happy with Pacino. Think back to his beginning performance of Michael. He’s soft-spoken and unsure. He doesn’t become Michael Corleone until the dinner scene, when he shoots the police commissioner and drug kingpin. Which was both Pacino and Coppola’s intent: Michael was a coil, resisting the family trade until he sprung into action. 

The person responsible for keeping The Godfather, as we know it, intact was Marlon Brando. If Paramount fired Coppola, they’d also be able to replace Pacino, but Brando was someone they’d never replace. Brando threatened to walk if Paramount fired Coppola. Still, it wasn’t until the Sollozzo dinner scene was shown to executives that Coppola and Pacino were safe. That year, The Godfather broke box-office records and Pacino became one of the biggest actors for the next three decades.

Elvis was a made-for-television movie, but it’s notable for many reasons. It’s the first collaboration between Kurt Russell and director John Carpenter. They would go on to make Escape From New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and Escape From L.A together. But also, it was the first of many times that Russell would tackle the mystique of the entertainer, Elvis Presley. Russell would later voice Elvis for Forrest Gump and play an Elvis impersonator in 3,000 Miles to Graceland. But in many of Russell’s films he has held an Elvis swagger—a side smirk, coifed hair, and fluid hips.

He must’ve picked it up as a kid. Russell had a tiny role in a 1962 Elvis vanity picture, It Happened at the World’s Fair. In that film, Elvis paid a young Russell a quarter to kick him in the shin so that he could visit Nurse Warren (Joan O’Brien) in the hospital (cue “Trying to Get to You.”) Russell went on to be the most successful Disney star of the ‘70s. But he was re-appropriated by Carpenter. It all started here, as The King.

Sometimes it takes playing an icon to become an icon. Russell recalled that he didn’t know who Elvis was in ’62 and asked why girls were jumping on his car. Elvis responded with a smile and said, “They get crazy.” We can only assume that a 10-year-old Russell had cinematic tunnel vision, zeroed in on Presley as he walked toward the screaming girls, studied his hips, and stored everything away for nearly two decades. 

Swinton often likes to dress androgynous in her own fashion sense. She highlights her pointed features and apparent ease of swapping bodies with David Bowie. Swinton told W Magazine that she enjoys exploring “the limitlessness of an androgynous gesture.” Her breakout film Orlando, an adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel, allowed her to explore limitlessness as a performer. Swinton plays Orlando, a nobleman that Queen Elizabeth commands to stay young forever. Orlando lives for centuries and swaps genders throughout.

Swinton’s own family bloodlines greatly infused her performance. She can trace her father and mother's lineage to a Scottish king and several British Dukes. But who was most important to her? Swinton’s father, Major General Sir John Swinton, who was a commander of the Queen’s household division. Witnessing her father’s years of dress-in-court uniforms, she became fixated. “I remember more about his black patent, gold livery, scarlet-striped legs, and medal ribbons than I do my mother’s evening dresses,” Swinton recalled. And she knew, “I’d rather be handsome for an hour than pretty for a week.” And so it began with Orlando—Swinton was handsome as both man and woman, moving from army apparel to frilly gowns with a commanding ownership and physicality. Orlando was more than dress-up for the art-house. It’s a film that expresses the love of being able to have an identity.

Taylor was originally the young girl who played with Lassie, the bride to be in Father of the Bride, and one of the original Little Women. So it was a bit of a shock to audiences to see her at 18, in her first adult role in George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun. Taylor had fun with the allure, in a melodrama that is ultimately about the struggle of American mobility. Montgomery Clift is a laborer for a swimsuit manufacturer who accidentally impregnates a clingy, common co-worker (Shelley Winters). Taylor is a high society swimsuit-wearer who has “nothing to do.” The seductive invitation from the upper class is extended, ever so briefly, and it haunts Cliff for the rest of his life.

Ultimately, with this and subsequent performances during the Production Code, Taylor proved herself to be ahead of her time. While censors were concerned with her swimsuits, slips, and slip-ups on set (having an affair with Richard Burton during Cleopatra), flash-forward 15 years later and cinema would become oversexed and Taylor would be a drunken mess in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Taylor was the last of the Hollywood va-va-voom stars, and she roared like a lion—because she finally could.

Born Marion Morrison, John Wayne followed up his football days at USC by working as a prop assistant on the Fox studio lot. Director John Ford took a shine to him and gave him a few walk-on roles in which he was credited as “horse race spectator” and “condemned man in flashback.” Ford recommended Wayne to Raoul Walsh for his first starring role in The Big Trail and it flopped. Wayne and Ford remained friends, but Wayne was discouraged when Ford would ask him casting advice. Ford told Wayne to wait, and that he would use him when he was more developed as an actor. That chance came when Ford decided to make his first talkie-Western, Stagecoach. Wayne had only starred in cheap B-Westerns. But eventually United Artists agreed to make it with Wayne as the star. The Duke was born and the Western was changed forever. It’s hard to watch Stagecoach with a clean slate because ultimately it informed every Western made after it and because it introduced the myth of John Wayne—two things that are very familiar to us now. But Stagecoach broke both molds. 

Because Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) was one of the first action heroines—and certainly the first to get multiple movies—there has been a lot of dissection of what her gender means in Alien. But Ripley was always just reacting. “Don’t study it,” she pleads. “Get away from her!” she shouts at the alien. “We’re going to wipe them out,” she demands of her male superiors. If anything, the Alien series might just be an acknowledgement that mankind feels compelled to study the universe and all of its creatures because they don’t know anything innately, because innateness only comes from possessing the capability of motherhood.

What we do know is that Weaver will forever be linked to feminist theory due to her ability to do what few men have been able to do in the Alien series: survive an encounter with that alien. And for that to happen in your third film? It must be elemental. But she has been having more fun in the latter years of her career with sci-fi cameos in Paul, Cabin in the Woods, and more. Now, Weaver is the queen of Science Fiction.