The funny business of comedic actors getting serious

Pity the poor, stereotyped comic actor. Doomed forever to play the role of the clown, to make people laugh at the very sight of their face in a film. Never to get the chance to wow audiences with their dramatic acting skills. It doesn't mean they don't try, though. Last week, another of life's funnymen, Nick Frost, made his bid to be taken seriously. The only problem was, he did so while promoting his amusing role as a hairy-chested hippie in the forthcoming alien invasion comedy Attack the Block.

Most will know Frost from his various comic collaborations with Simon Pegg - "zom-com" Shaun of the Dead, surreal TV sitcom Spaced, cop spoof Hot Fuzz and recent sci-fi comedy Paul. He is genuinely funny in these stories, a - shall we say - larger-than-life character in more ways than one. But as he told the BBC on Friday: "I've always been funny as a kid, so it's not a challenge to me to be funny. It's the other stuff that's difficult, so I like to challenge myself."

To that end, he played John Self in the BBC adaptation of Martin Amis's novel Money last year. While it was an interesting, well received performance, Amis's book is, really, supposed to be a humorous portrait of greed and self-destruction in 1984 London and New York. Frost wasn't completely out of his comfort zone - although, he did manage to portray someone who is both nasty and a bit vulnerable with some aplomb.

Frost wouldn't be the first comic actor desperate for awards rather than laughs. And why shouldn't they be given the chance? After all, making people believe in you enough to laugh at your antics is an incredibly impressive skill. It's just that once a comic actor has made his name doing just that, it's difficult for directors and casting agents of serious dramas to pick a comedian to play a straight role in their film. They fear, probably correctly, that the audience will be distracted, waiting for a quip that isn't going to come. That the presence of a comedian will somehow dumb down the message.

But right back to Charlie Chaplin - who dabbled in political filmmaking with The Great Dictator, Modern Times and Monsieur Verdoux - comics have wanted to make "proper", serious art. Some have even been successful: Robin Williams made his name as a stand-up comic, and his major film breakthrough was as a motormouth DJ in 1987's Good Morning, Vietnam. And yet he was persuasive enough at auditions for Dead Poets' Society two years later to land the straight role of English teacher John Keating, whose unorthodox teaching methods inspire his students to alter their lives dramatically. As the famous line in the film goes, Williams seized the day - and received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He didn't look back, winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Good Will Hunting as the caring psychologist who teases the genius out of Matt Damon's character.

Williams's desire to be taken seriously had an impact upon his comedy films. As anyone who's had the misfortune to sit through Man of the Year or License to Wed will surely agree, he stopped being funny. Which is the career trajectory of more than a few comics seduced by the dramatic role. We'll never know whether Steve Martin, so wonderfully wry in Parenthood, became less amusing because he was starring in poor films or because he appeared in movies where comedy wasn't called for. His impressive performance as a wealthy stranger in David Mamet's 1997 suspense drama The Spanish Prisoner was such a step-change one wonders whether Martin knew, or even wanted to go back to comedy.

Similarly, Jim Carrey's movie career can generally be divided into pre-The Truman Show and post-Truman Show sections. The rubber-faced actor made us laugh and cry in that prescient 1998 film set entirely in a reality television show - and he proved himself to be quite the sensitive, restrained actor in Man on the Moon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, even though the latter was essentially an existential comedy. But, like Williams and Martin, his straight comedy work - be it Yes Man, Bruce Almighty or Fun with Dick and Jane - has dramatically diminished in quality since.

Of the current crop, Adam Sandler is possibly the only actor able to appear in hilariously crass comedies (Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy) and proper dramas (Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me) and somehow make both work. Perhaps that's because he doesn't actively seem to be desperate to be taken seriously. Which is, as Tom Cruise is strangely proving with his comic roles in Tropic Thunder and Knight and Day, to be celebrated.

Nick Frost, be warned: going serious is a funny old business.

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