16 Actors Who Surprisingly Got Their Own Action Movie - And Nailed It

Colin Firth has always excelled at playing characters who exude a certain sense of stately distance and classy reserve (think of his role in Bridget Jones's Diary or Pride and Prejudice). Firth is masterful at bringing characters to life that the audience is invited to like, care about, and even love, even though they can be rather priggish.

This makes his action-star turn as Harry Hart in Kingsman: The Secret Service extraordinary. He not only manages to keep so much of what makes him appealing - the crisp delivery, the sense of nobility - but also adds a particularly devastating killer instinct. It is important to remember Harry is, first and foremost, a gentleman. After all, one doesn’t have to be a brute to be an effective and ruthless killer…

Bob Odenkirk has been in Hollywood for quite a while, but he really only became a household name after he appeared as the morally compromised lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and its spinoff, Better Call Saul. Saul is, in his own way, an even more fascinating character than Walter White, and a great deal of this stems from Odenkirk, who brings out the emotional richness of this fascinating individual.

Fortunately for action fans, Odenkirk was cast in the 2021 film Nobody. His character, Hutch, is hiding a secret: though seemingly a family man, he is a trained assassin. Odenkirk, to his credit, manages to capture both sides of Hutch’s personality exquisitely. In keeping with the conventions of the genre, Nobody is quite severe at times, but the actor never lets the viewer forget the essential human behind the ruthless exterior.

To many people, Liam Neeson is a “serious” actor due to his appearances in many prestigious pictures early in his career, most notably Schindler’s List. In the second phase of his career, he was often a figure of wisdom and sagacity. Think Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace, Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia, and Henri Ducard in Batman Begins for examples of this.

However, beginning in the late 2000s, he turned to some darker thematic territory, starting with the film Taken. This 2008 movie sees Neeson play a man whose daughter is snatched by an Albanian human trafficker. Neeson transforms the weighty sagacity of his earlier roles into a steely and iron-willed determination in his part of Bryan Mills, a man determined to rescue his daughter at any cost. Nowadays, Neeson is seemingly in a new action film on an almost yearly basis, and it's all thanks to the success of Taken.

For much of the 1990s, Geena Davis cemented a well-earned reputation for being a bankable star. In films like Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own, she excelled at crafting women who were both vulnerable and strong. Small wonder she became something of a feminist icon at the time. And, like many actresses of the 1990s, she also repeatedly demonstrated her range as a performer, with one of her most notable appearances being in 1996’s The Long Kiss Goodnight. 

In the film, Davis plays a mother who - in a surprise to no one who has ever seen an action film before - finds out she is really a trained assassin. Davis demonstrates great control of the physical sequences throughout the film, and it is truly rewarding to watch her perform many of her own stunts. She is, more than anything else, a woman committed to her craft. And Samuel L. Jackson is there too!

Ever since she had her breakout role as the teenaged Briony in Atonement, Saoirse Ronan has shown there is very little she cannot do when it comes to acting. From a teen trying to find herself in Lady Bird to a queen forging her own destiny in Mary, Queen of Scots, she has shown remarkable talent for someone so young.

Though Hanna might be a bit derivative in terms of its plot - which focuses on a girl raised to be an assassin by her father and the efforts of those who want to terminate her - it is one of those movies which succeeds on the strength of its acting. Ronan’s icy demeanor is perfect for her role as Hanna, and appearing alongside such formidable talents as Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett allows her to show the skill for which she has been so deservedly praised.

For much of his career, Michael Caine has excelled at acting in both dramatic and comedic roles. In both cases, he brings a certain measure of class and prestige, which has been particularly true in the later stages of his career. Even in a film like The Muppet Christmas Carol, which could have been entirely over-the-top ridiculous, he turns in an exemplary performance as Ebenezer Scrooge. 

Though he’s no stranger to harder-hitting dramas, it is still striking to see him take the lead in a film as vicious as Harry Brown, where he plays an older man who becomes a vigilante after his friend is slain. In less capable hands, the film could have been a celebration of rampant violence, but Caine’s performance allows Harry to become more than just a killing machine. He is, instead, a man struggling to piece together his recently shattered world.