Some actors have a natural sense of gravitas that they bring with them to every film – a persona that immediately adds a bit of class to whatever role they fill. This kind of stage presence doesn’t happen overnight, though, and some of these serious actors have some rather embarrassing roots. Everybody has to start somewhere, and these five powerhouse actors had some surprisingly undignified early roles.
Sean Penn – Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast Times at Ridgemont High was an iconic 1980s teen film that managed to help launch the career of a number of successful actors. In 2005, the movie was even selected for preservation as a historically significant film. It’s not, however, likely to be confused with highbrow entertainment.
The film followed an ensemble cast of high school students as they attempt to navigate jobs and relationships. Penn’s character, a stoned-out surfer and unrepentant underachiever, is the star of a recurring subplot and a role fondly remembered by fans.
It’s not a role that Penn seems particularly proud of today, though, and he’s been in very few comedies ever since. Instead, he’s preferred to fill emotionally hard-hitting roles in classics like The Thin Red Line and Mystic River.
Tom Hanks – Mazes & Monsters
Tom Hanks is a versatile actor who’s played a wide range of roles. Even when some of those films didn’t turn out so well, Hanks is still generally regarded as a pretty serious, respectable actor, with five Oscar nominations and two wins under his belt. Outside of fiction, he has also lent his talents to numerous documentaries, most recently narrating a two-part anniversary film commemorating the 9/11 attacks directed by New York Film Academy professor Eddie Rosenstein.
All of his achievements in cinema are probably why the 2005 DVD re-release of Mazes & Monsters displays his face so prominently on the box, despite it being a movie Hanks is probably all-too-eager to forget.
Mazes & Monsters was a 1982 cautionary tale about the dangers of tabletop role-playing games, loosely inspired by real events. The film progresses roughly as one might expect: Once Hanks is introduced as an obsessed gamer, he starts a slow descent into madness, accompanied by some cheesy costume-wearing monsters and even cheesier action sequences, before culminating in murder. As every RPG should, really.
Brendan Fraser – Encino Man
Most people would consider Brendan Fraser’s breakout role to be With Honors, a poignant dramedy about a Harvard student and his relationship with the wily homeless man who’s holding his honors thesis hostage. These people are overlooking Fraser’s first real role, though, in 1992’s Encino Man.
Encino Man is a lighthearted romp about two high school outcasts who find – and subsequently attempt to socialize – a caveman who’s been shielded in a block of ice. The teens are played by Sean, Astin and Pauly Shore, and a young Brendan Fraser plays the caveman Link. This wouldn’t be the last time Fraser would take this sort of role, as the cringe-worthy George of the Jungle would prove five years later, but it’s not exactly a film Fraser looks back on with pride.
Philip Seymour Hoffman – My Boyfriend’s Back
On a list of “best character actors,” Philip Seymour Hoffman would have to score right at the top. He’s got an impressive resume of supporting roles in great films like Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Big Lebowski. He was recently nominated for an Academy Award for The Master.
And then there’s My Boyfriend’s Back, a 1993 film that’s mysteriously absent from all but the most thorough of Hoffman’s filmographies. The story revolves around a high school student who returns from the dead to court the girl he was afraid to pursue while alive, a situation that’s further problematized by his hunger for flesh.
Hoffman plays a school bully whose pursuit of the undead protagonist is cut suddenly short by a comically disturbing incident with an axe. Interestingly, though My Boyfriend’s Back was a major box office flop, it did help launch the careers of several young actors including Matthew Fox, Matthew McConaughey; Renee Zellweger was also involved in filming, but her scene never made it into the film.
Joseph Gordon Levitt – Angels in the Outfield
Unless you were really paying attention, Joseph Gordon Levitt seemed to come out of nowhere. He’s one of the best things about Inception; he nails his role(s) in The Dark Knight Rises, and Academy-Award-winning Lincoln. But where did this guy come from, and how did he end up being so good?
Attentive audiences from the 90s might recognize him from his relatively small role in 10 Things I Hate About You, a teen film that also helped launch the career of Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. They might have even remembered that he played the long-suffering teen alien character in the sitcom Third Rock from the Sun.
What they might not realize, though, is that Levitt was a prolific child star, appearing in a number of small roles – and as the leading act in the feel-good Angels in the Outfield. It’s a little hard to imagine innocent young Roger Bomman playing a hardened killer in Looper, but that just goes to show how far Levitt’s come over the past decade.
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