Five Comedians Who Nailed The Cross-Over To Drama

In Chris Rock’s new comedy Top Five, Rock play Andre Allen: a stand-up comedian who finds Hollywood fame while dressed in a bear suit. Against his agent’s advice, Allen tries to salvage his professional dignity by making an earnest period drama. To celebrate the release of the film this week, we’re taking a look at some comedy stars who have nailed the cross-over to drama.

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The phenomenon of comedians playing against type in dramatic roles is well-known enough – and successful enough – that the TV Tropes website gave it a name: Tom Hanks Syndrome. Throughout the ’80s, Hanks was known as a wacky funnyman; then in 1993 he made Philadelphia and booked an appointment with Oscar. Other comedians who’ve trodden the same path to forge whimsical, melancholy professional personas include Robin Williams, Steve Carell, Jim Carrey and Bill Murray.

But here are my top five.

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Patton Oswalt

I first encountered Oswalt as a hilarious but disembodied voice — through his excruciatingly funny stand-up comedy albums, and as the voice of Remy the foodie rat in Pixar’s charming Ratatouille.

The same emphatic delivery and pop-cultural fervour that underpin Oswalt’s humour were channelled beautifully in 2009’s Big Fan, directed by The Wrestler screenwriter Robert D Siegel. As rabid New York Giants football fan Paul Aufiero, Oswalt dramatises how obsession can simultaneously hollow out a person’s life and fill it with meaning. Paul is pitiable.

Oswalt also displays a teddybearish vulnerability in Young Adult (2011). Billed as a comedy, Jason Reitman’s film (scripted by Diablo Cody) is really a grimly funny drama. Oswalt is Matt Freehauf, a former classmate of ageing queen bee Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), who becomes her sardonic confidant as she returns to her Minnesota hometown. Life has been cruel to Matt, but Oswalt imbues the character with a mixture of sassiness, quiet dignity, and painful nerdiness.

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Whoopi Goldberg

You might know her as the cabaret performer-turned singing nun in Sister Act, or the zany psychic Oda Mae in Ghost (a role for which she won an Oscar). But Goldberg’s early work was in avant-garde theatre, and her one-woman Broadway show used character monologues to make social observations.

Goldberg’s breakout role was in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. She’s the downtrodden but resilient Celie, who survives an abusive marriage to Albert (Danny Glover) to build her own independent life. Goldberg’s powerful performance has the audience always rooting for Celie on her difficult journey.

There’s something both steely and maternal about Goldberg in dramatic mode.

Clara’s Heart (1988) saw her as a Jamaican mother figure to a very young, annoying Neil Patrick Harris. In Boys on the Side (1995), she’s a cynical lesbian singer hoping a cross-country road trip will help start a new life. And in Girl Interrupted (1999), she’s the no-nonsense matron at the mental hospital where Susanna (Winona Ryder) is incarcerated.

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Jamie Foxx

Foxx’s transformation into a serious actor has been so convincing that it’s hard to remember that, back in the early ’90s, he was frequently in drag on the sketch show In Living Color. Then he had his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show, from 1996-2001.

But in 2004, Foxx became the only male actor apart from Al Pacino to be nominated for two acting Oscars in the same year – and they were both for dramatic films. As the lead role in biopic Ray, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar, Foxx performed an extraordinary piece of biographical ventriloquism. He doesn’t just nail Ray Charles’ familiar mannerisms without making them seem cartoonish; he also captures the musician’s stubborn, arrogant, self-destructive personality, and his unerring musical intelligence.

Collateral couldn’t have been more different. As diffident taxi driver Max, Foxx is the film’s moral centre: a stolid foil for Tom Cruise’s sinister contract killer. Foxx’s performance is wonderfully underplayed, full of anxiety. He’s the audience stand-in, and like Cruise, we’re with him for the entire ride.

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Kristen Wiig

Whether it’s on Saturday Night Live, as the hapless heroine of 2011’s Bridesmaids, or in many wonderful comic supporting roles (my favourite is the passive-aggressive network executive in Knocked Up), I’m so used to being charmed by Kristen Wiig’s comedy that its absence feels magnetic. When she danced with Maddie Ziegler to Sia’s ‘Chandelier’ at the 2015 Grammy Awards, I was blown away by her unexpected, wholly committed sincerity.

In Whip It (2009), she’s Maggie Mayhem, the roller derby team’s mama-bear. Because Maggie is fun and easy-going, we’re stung — along with teen heroine Bliss (Ellen Page) — when Maggie reproaches Bliss for lying to her parents. Wiig’s seriousness makes us realise Maggie has her own adult life. She’s not Bliss’s cool fantasy mum.

And in last year’s excellent The Skeleton Twins, Wiig’s usually expressive face is worryingly blank. She’s a different Maggie now – sour, bewildered, defeated, her zest for life gone. It annoys me that most available clips from the film – even its trailer – focus on Wiig’s co-star Bill Hader, who gets more zingy moments. Like so many uneasy dramedies in which comedians play straight, The Skeleton Twins ventures into seriously grim places, yet it was still marketed as ‘funny’. And Wiig is particularly committed to some bleak scenes of unlikeability.

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Eric Bana

Remember Poida from Full Frontal? As the top YouTube comment says, “Can’t believe this is Hector of Troy.” Look, Troy (2004) was not a very good movie. But Bana’s dramatic roles transformed his career; nobody in Hollywood now remembers that back in 1997, he played Con, the kickboxing accountant from The Castle.

One word explains why – Chopper. Bana was mesmerising in Andrew Dominik’s 2000 biopic of Australia’s most publicity-seeking career criminal. Bana’s Chopper is feral, never quite in control – at times he seems shocked by his own actions. Bana also skewers Chopper’s delight in his own notoriety, and the black farce of his self-serving behaviour.

As the bros in Knocked Up say, “If any of us get laid tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in Munich.” But he doesn’t just kick Palestinian ass. There’s a tenderness to Bana’s performance as Israeli counter-terrorist assassin Avner Kaufman; It manifests as nationalist idealism, as yearning for normal family life, as post-traumatic stress, and as profound disillusionment. He also does a much less corny Israeli accent than Geoffrey Rush.

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Top Five tells the story of NYC comedian-turned-film star Andre Allen (Chris Rock), whose unexpected encounter with a journalist (Rosario Dawson) forces him to confront the comedy career—and the past—that he’s left behind. The film was co-produced by Jay Z and Kanye West, and hits cinemas on March 12.

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She tweets at @incrediblemelk.