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8 Great Double Performances From A Single Actor

It's quite difficult for an actor to convincingly play one movie character, with all their faults, tics and foibles. Even the greatest actors in the world don't always get the complexities of a performance right, even with all their attention focused on the part. Imagine the difficulty, then, of one actor facing down the challenge of playing not one character, but two, in the exact same goddamn movie.

8) Paul Dano In There Will Be Blood

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Originally, Paul Dano was only to make a cameo in Paul Thomas Anderson’s turn-of-the-century oil epic There Will Be Blood, as Paul Sunday, the prospector who puts Daniel Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview on a collision course with his brother Eli. Anderson must have seen something more in Dano, though, because it’s this cameo that got him the part of Eli Sunday – when original actor Kel O’Neill dropped out during shooting – as well.

On the page, Eli Sunday is a self-righteous, holier-than-thou preacher with a thirst for power and wealth, but Dano makes him somehow even more despicable – a pathetic, sly and egotistical cult leader.

In most movies, Eli would be the villain; but as he’s up against the mighty Day-Lewis, playing one of the most cunning movie villains of this century, Sunday has to take second billing in the evil stakes. Dano makes a bloody good go of it, though.

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