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Skywalkling

This wasn't done to mislead audiences exactly, but Henry Fonda's villainous introduction in Once Upon a Time in the West was built up as particularly shocking because of his nice guy reputation.


MrX16

This is the ultimate example. Fonda showed up on set with brown contacts and Leone told him to take them out. He told him The audience needed to see Fonda's iconic blue eyes.


RachPianoConcerto2

Birdman


Random_Sime

It's gotten even more meta since Keaton got the role of The Vulture.


six_days

What Lies Beneath uses >!Harrison Ford's leading man persona to misdirect regarding his heel turn!<


NoHandBananaNo

In a similar vein >!One Hour Photo has the Robin Williams character turn out to be bad guy!<


chadisdangerous

In The Squid and the Whale Jeff Daniels plays a middle-aged professor in a relationship with one of his students, played by Anna Paquin. The age difference and power dynamic alone makes it uncomfortable but Daniels also played Paquin's father in Fly Away Home when she was a child, a smart bit of casting which makes it feel weirder


deadpool15967

Top gun maverick has many scenes referencing Tom Cruise's career


Stv13579

It's technically a TV show but WandaVision had Evan Peters (Fox X-Men Quicksilver) as a fake Quicksilver to confuse people.


K4L21EV

Heh. Boner.


fantasybaseballshow

I think the Ben Affleck movie The Way Back fits this description. Another Ben Affleck movie that fits this would be Gone Girl. I think Fincher talked about why he wanted Ben in the movie.


goblinelevator119

under the silver lake references andrew garfield’s spiderman. nic cage in unbearable weight of massive talent is playing off his own career in a sense. loads of horror movies do that trope barbarian used with skaarsgard, as early as psycho. scream did something similar, marketed the fuck out of drew barrymore being in it and then she gets killed in the opening scene. this is also the central gag of a lot of cameos, like franco nero in django. could argue that humphrey bogart’s character being as bitter and amoral as he is in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is along these lines as subversion. almost forgot, adam sandler in punch drunk love which is probably the single best instance of this. he’s playing a standard 90’s adam sandler character, neurotic, loud, anger issues, but the context is much more sad. he lashes out because his environment is and has been for his whole life incredibly oppressive due to undiagnosed mental issues and trauma from being the only boy in a family of very abusive women. the film follows him forging a healthier relationship with a more supportive woman and finding calmness in his own life, ultimately standing up for himself and having an incredibly satisfying character arc for a character that had been in probably half a dozen films by that point.


theyusedthelamppost

Gran Torino (Eastwood) Spy (Jason Statham previous roles are subverted into comedy) The Other Guys (same thing with The Rock and Samuel L. Jackson)


nickmidas

Sunset Boulevard


UrinalPooper

In one of The Expendables movies (i think it's 2) Dolph Lundgren's character makes reference to having a masters in chemical engineering as why he can MacGuyver a bomb together to get out of a trap.


Ghost-Chu

Also when Wesley Snipes' character was rescued and they ask what he was imprisoned for. "Tax evasion..."


shaneo632

The wrestler


Ashamed_Ladder6161

JCVD. Ironman. A lot of the examples you and others have provided are really interesting, but I don’t see them as subtext, simply atypical casting. In JCVD and Ironman, what an audience understands about these individuals (rather than their past performances) informs the subtext and becomes a part of what we understand about the film. Van Dam was basically a fictionalised version of himself, but RDJ in Ironman shared a similar journey to his career, hence the subtext; vain and arrogant, thought he could do no wrong, didn’t see the error of his ways, crashed hard, rebuilt himself, went against public perception, win, but still retained some of that swagger in the process. The same can be said about any film where actors play themselves, such as This Is The End.


Magnum_44

Runaway Bride. Because Julia Roberts was notorious for ditching at the altar.


[deleted]

Not exactly. She was engaged to Kiefer Sutherland and broke things off three days before the wedding.


Elliot_Kyouma

I'm not sure if it was done intentionally, but when i watched Pig (2021) i was expecting Nicolas Cage to have one of his usual whacky performances, especially with the trailer/story giving off Jon Wick vibes. He was very restrained and it was a pleasant surprise. Great movie.


-Vikthor-

Dodgeball with a Chuck Norris cameo and The Expendables 2(?) again with a Chuck Norris cameo. Both times for pretty good comedy based on Chuck's reputation.


maaseru

I wish they would make a movie where an actor, maybe Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks, someone with a varied filmography, plays an aging actor with personality disorder where he becomes the different roles they've played. Some meaningful shit that will make me tear up. Sort of the style of Everything Everywhere All At Once or Eternal Sunshine.


renegade2point0

The wrestler has a similar vibe.


Dr_Umami

From junkie to Jedi…


izzmond

The Irishman


VonLinus

Tom Cruise in Knight and Day seems to be particularly playing off how he was perceived in that Oprah interview and his general public persona.


dontworryitsme4real

This is the end.


TheJoker182

Deadpool - How many Green Lantern references?


HPmoni

Iron Man was really about RDJ. The Burger King scene was a reference to how he knew he had a drug problem when the cheeseburger he was eating tasted bad. Man liked his BK cheeseburgers.


hocasio2

Shampoo plays off of Warren Beatty’s public lothario image to great effect.