10) Cate Blanchett As Bob Dylan In I’m Not There
It’s rare that Hollywood movies dare to defy convention when it comes to gender: race-swapping has, apparently, been deemed OK since cinema began (hello, Birth of a Nation), but gender-swapping has always been less prevalent.
I’m Not There features a rare example of a female actor taking on a male role. In Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic, Cate Blanchett takes on the role of the 60s folk icon, electro-shocked wig and all.
In the context of the film, it makes sense: Dylan is variously played as young, old, black, white, male and female by six different actors, one of whom happens to be Blanchett. She also funnily enough happens to offer the most convincing portrait of Dylan of the lot, astoundingly looking more like Dylan than any of the male cast members.
9) John Wayne As Genghis Khan In The Conqueror
When you think John Wayne, you almost certainly think all-American hero, rarely seen without a cowboy hat or out of combat fatigues. By and large, there were two types of performance Wayne gave in his career: cowboy and soldier. Oh, and there was also that time he played 12th century warrior and Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan.
Dick Powell’s Khan biopic The Conqueror has been regularly dubbed one of the worst of all time, with the casting of Wayne as the great Mongol chieftain considered particularly misjudged. Almost as misjudged as Powell’s decision to shoot the film down wind of a nuclear weapons testing site. Even the 1950s thought this was bad taste, with critics at the time observing that Wayne was, to put it mildly, miscast.
