I just had a conversation with someone earlier about Mark Strong, who has played so many villains in the last few years (Stardust, Kick-Ass, Robin Hood). I said how cool it would be to see him in a role that is not only not the villain but actually turns out to be a good guy halfway through the film. The other guy said he'd find it weird to see him as someone good.
Am I the only one who, despite of liking certain actors and being glad they are in many films, wants to see people not always cast as the same type?

TV is almost even worse in that. Not only do TV shows use the same faces over and over, they don't even change their roles around that much. Take Zeljko Ivanek (Mutant hunter Danko from "Heroes" ). He's gonna be in the new show "The Event" this fall. Wanna bet that he's gonna be a creepy government asshole or such?
And after "Alias", "Angel" and "Firefly", I wanna see Gina Torres as weak, submissive housewife sometime.
Of course there are examples of the opposite too. "24" always did a great job at turning characters around when you already thought you'd figured them out. Then again, they almost went too far with that. because you ended up afraid to like a character, when he'd just end up getting killed or turned out to be the bad guy any minute anyway.

Now, one could say that the same goes for people with a Mister-Clean-image, especially the big movie stars, who sometime want a grittier and more evil role but are stuck with their pristine heroes. So they either try it half heartedly (Kevin Costner in "A perfect world" was only a little mean and still the hero of the film) or they go too far: Although it was a nice twist to have Harrison Ford be the bad guy in "What lies beneath", I am sorry, I do not want to see Han or Indy as psycho. There are very few actors who have been used both in really mean and really positive roles and came out with an intact image.

What do you think? Would you like to see some of the regular mean faces appear in positive roles from time to time or does their look just not allow it? How do you feel when the usual good guy comes out with a role of the villain? Wouldn't it make for much more satisfying plots if you couldn't tell from the first look at someone how his character's gonna turn out? Or do you like the warm cozy feeling of knowing "that face will always be evil" or "he'll always be my hero"?