This week's gonzo teen nightmare Spring Breakers is trumpeting the fact that two of its leads - Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez - traditionally play "good girls". But the whole "teen idol gone bad" strategy is a longstanding Hollywood tradition aimed to help transition pigeonholed teen stars into "serious" actors.
Here are a few fellas who tried the tactic, to varying degrees of success.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas in Speedway Junky
The squeaky-clean kid from Home Improvement took a step toward tarnishing his image by playing an evil, bisexual hooker in this gritty drama, giving a whole new meaning to "Tool Time"!
Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Mysterious Skin
JGL also went the hustler route for his breakout from small-screen teen stardom - only the 3rd Rock star went "the full gay" in this unsettling and excellent indie drama.
Lukas Haas in Johns
Yet another teen heartthrob caught a case of gay hustleritis - this time it's the kid from Witness, Lady in White and Solarbabies who hit the street for some indie cred in this bleak skid row slice-of-life opposite David Arquette.
Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, Party Monster
Probably the biggest good-kid star of all time, Culkin made a move to the dark side while still a pre-teen by playing a decidedly bad seed in The Good Son. But it was his return from his self-imposed Hollywood hiatus that really caught our eye: playing murderous gay club lord Michael Alig in the hallucinatory Party Monster.
Elijah Wood in Sin City, Maniac
Speaking of The Good Son, Wood (a kid star from North, Forever Young, Flipper, The War, Radio Flyer, Huck Finn, and more) played decidedly against good-guy type as a vaguely mutant cannibal murderer named Kevin in the stylized Sin City. But it's his truly WTF turn in the upcoming Maniac remake that may make some of us forget Frodo forever.
Anthony Perkins in Psycho
The mother of all "gotcha!" castings may have come from the father of all "gotcha!"s: Alfred Hitchcock specifically cast Perkins because of his image as a goody-goody romantic lead. It probably also registered that Perkins - like Norman Bates - was also living with a secret. Interestingly enough, Perkins would from this point on be typecast as psychologically unhinged - tipped the scale a bit too far, maybe?
Zac Efron in The Paperboy
Zefron graduated from limp-haired High School Musical crush to grows-up leading man in movies like 18 Again and That Nicholas Sparks Movie Where Zac Efron Takes His Shirt Off. Granted, he's one of the less nauseating characters in Paperboy, but his beeftastic role as a morally ambiguous teen swimmer in this pulpy noir mess was clearly supposed to signify his willingness to tackle edgier fare.
Leonardo Dicaprio in The Basketball Diaries
DiCaprio played junkie hustler poet Jim Carroll in this ill-behaved biopic to scuff up his image after years of playing apple-cheeked kids on TV (Growing Pains, Parenthood). Then Titanic and Romeo + Juliet hit the reset button, and it was back to the cover of Teen Beat for Leo.
Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar movies
In one of the most truly inspired about-faces on this list, the kid star of Doogie Howser, M.D. sent up his own nice-guy image by playing himself as a drug-crazed, hetero horndog in this pot comedy trilogy. When Harris came out publicly as gay midway through the series, it only gave him more material to work with.
Michael J. Fox in Bright Lights, Big City
Alex P. Keaton (and young Mr. McFly) did an about-face as the hard-partying protagonist of the Bret Easton Ellisiest non-Bret Easton Ellis movie ever made, yuppie requiem Bright Lights, Big City. (He had previously made less cocaine-y attempts at messing up his image with snotty-yet-harmless sex comedy The Secret of My Success and domestic rocker drama Light of Day.)
Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation
The rapper whose edgiest lyrics were "parents just don't understand!" and actor who played nice on Fresh Prince chose the role of a gay con artist to show audiences his range.
James Van Der Beek in Rules of Attraction
Speaking of the devil, Ellis's Rules of Attraction was a project that teen stars with wholesome images threw themselves at in the hopes of livening up their resumes. Dawson Leary (as a heartless, hard-living, womanizing cad) and castmate Jessica Biel had the most fun playing against type. (VDB would later go on to pull an NPH by playing a douchified version of himself on Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23.)
Anthony Michael Hall in Edward Scissorhands
It was a shock for many of us to see the stock nerd from every great '80s comedy beefed up and mean as Winona Ryder's bully boyfriend in this Tim Burton classic. (Hall would also show up as Will Smith's hookup/partner-in-crime in Six Degrees.)
Again, teen titans pull a U to refresh their images all the time, and these are just a few of our faves. Do you have others that deserve to be celebrated? Share 'em in the comments!
