32 Movie And TV Characters Who Experienced An Extreme Personality Change

The person you are right now might bear very little resemblance to who you were before, either due to a life-changing event or even just by some natural progression. The same could also be said about many of your favorite characters from the big and small screen as personal evolutions often tend to serve as a major plot point or just happen to occur over time when the writers take one appealing behavioral trait and make that the crux of the role. See if you remember any of these movie and TV characters behaving a different way from how they were first introduced.

Jack Torrance (The Shining)

One of Stephen King’s biggest gripes with Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of his book, The Shining, is the casting of Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, who already boasts a somewhat unsettling disposition the moment he first enters the frame. However, fans of the horror flick find The Overlook’s murderous and maniacal influence over the husband and father to be quite effective.

Walter White (Breaking Bad)

In the first episode of Breaking Bad, high school teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) describes chemistry as the study of "transformation." The same could be said about his story, going from a mild-mannered family man diagnosed with lung cancer to a ruthless criminal over the course of five captivating seasons.

Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars Movies)

We could do a whole list of characters from the Star Wars franchise who changed dramatically overtime, but the most legendary instance of this is, without a doubt, Anakin Skywalker. Jake Lloyd portrayed the Tattooine native as a precocious, but good-natured young man with the potential to be a great Jedi Knight, but Hayden Christensen's performance revealed a latent darkness within him that would eventually lead to his destiny as Sith lord, Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones).

Elaine Benes (Seinfeld)

For the first few years of Seinfeld, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) served as the gang's default voice of reason, with only the occasional lapse of judgment or angry outburst amidst her mild-mannered persona. In the sitcom's latter years, angry outbursts and lapses in moral judgment became some of her more definitive traits.

Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare On Elm Street)

To us, what makes Robert Englund's burned boogeyman one of the all-time greatest horror movie villains is the brutal, menacing nature he exhibited in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street from 1984. The sequels, however, made Freddy Krueger’s dark sense of humor his defining character trait, resulting in deaths of increasingly ridiculous sort.

Eric Matthews (Boy Meets World)

Will Friedle landed the role in the Boy Meets World cast of the "cool" older brother to the central protagonist, Cory Matthews (Ben Savage). However, at one point, Eric seemed to completely and inexplicably lose his mind, adopting a dim-wit, but a high energy that, essentially, made him the TGIF sitcom's resident cartoon character.

Ash Williams (The Evil Dead Franchise)

Fans of the Evil Dead movies are the first to note that the Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) they know and love is not quite the same person from the 1981 classic that started it all. After suffering the Deadites’ further taunting and being forced to replace his right hand with a chainsaw in Evil Dead II, he turns into the iconic wise-cracking and bumbling, but also resourceful horror movie character from Army of the Darkness and the spin-off series, Ash vs. Evil Dead.

Sansa Stark (Game Of Thrones)

One of the most fascinating character arcs from the Game of Thrones cast is that of Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner). After suffering abuse at the hands of her husband, Bolton Ramsay (Iwan Rheon), the meek, young woman learns that she can only look out for herself in her kill-or-be-killed world, becoming a fierce, vengeful warrior.

Steve Harrington (Stranger Things)

The first season of Stranger Things introduced Steve Harrington (Joe Kerry) as the archetypal '80s high school bully and, in fact, the Duffer Brothers originally wrote him to be even worse. By the end of Season 2, he found friendship with the younger children he looked down on, accepted Nancy's new relationship with Jonathan Byers, and became a favorite among fans of Netflix's smash hit sci-fi series.

Shrek (Shrek)

In 2001's Oscar-winning animated classic, Shrek, Mike Myers' title character owns his reputation as an ogre with his ceaseless grumpiness and preference to be alone. That is, until he meets someone he would like to spend his life with in Fiona (Cameron Diaz), who brings the lovable man out of this monster.

Joey Tribbiani (Friends)

Joey Tribbiani is often referred to as the "dumb" one in the Friends cast but, as real fans should recall, that was not always the case. In the first few seasons, he is depicted as merely naive, only to evolve into a helplessly, but lovably, childlike dolt by the hit NBC sitcom's curtain call.

Harvey Dent (The Dark Knight)

Die-hard Batman fans immediately knew that idealistic Gotham DA Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) philosophy about dying a hero or living long enough to become the villain was foreshadowing his own destiny as Two-Face in 2008's The Dark Knight. Losing the love of his life, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and half of his face drives him to the opposite side of the law, leaving his moral judgment, literally, to the flip of a coin.

Thor (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Chris Hemsworth's Thor undergoes one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most transformative character arcs, boasting a godly eloquence and wisdom in his first few appearances. However, Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame made the God of Thunder a bit funnier, and to much acclaim, but 2022's Thor: Love and Thunder took that schtick even further, resorting him to something of a dim-witted, egotistical jock.

Ned Flanders (The Simpsons)

Voiced by Harry Shearer, Ned Flanders' arc on The Simpsons from being Homer Simpson's complete opposite — an intelligent, hard-working, devoted family man — to an absurdly conservative, religious fundamentalist is a quintessential example of extreme or merely exaggerated TV character changes. In fact, this exact phenomenon has been nicknamed "Flanderization" as a result.

Beast/Prince Adam (Beauty And The Beast)

Disney's animated 1991 favorite, Beauty and the Beast is just one version of an age-old, signature tale of drastic character growth, namely that of the titular Beast, who used to be a selfish human royal named Adam. A witch cursed him to look like a ferocious creature, only to be turned back when he could find someone (Belle) to love him, which was only possible when he learned to love someone other than himself.

Michael Scott (The Office)

In the first season of NBC's American update of The Office, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) was, essentially, made to be a carbon copy of the uproariously rude and self-absorbed David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais in the original British version. However, Dunder-Mifflin's Scranton branch Manager was later reinvented as a kindhearted soul cursed with social awkwardness and hopeless incompetence.

Michael Corleone (The Godfather)

At the beginning of the first half of Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) reveals to his girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), his family’s mafia history, but assures her, "That’s my family... that's not me." However, a rival mob's attempt to murder his father (Marlon Brando) awakens a coldness within him and, eventually, he is put in charge of the family business.

T-800 (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)

To be clear, we are not counting Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in James Cameron's sci-fi franchise for his evolution from killer in The Terminator to protector in the 1991 sequel, because he is playing a different copy of the same model in each film. However, the cyborg begins to take on some surprising human-like characteristics in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and may have even developed some capacity for emotion, evidenced by when he tells John Connor (Edward Furlong), "I know now why you cry," before saying farewell.

Jen (Revenge)

In just one night, Jen (Matilda Lutz) was no longer a naive, carefree young woman and was reborn into a fierce warrior of the desert. All it took was a horrifying assault and subsequent murder attempt by her boyfriend and his business partners, on which she deservedly exacted revenge — hence the title of Coralie Fargeat's 2018 adrenaline-pumping thriller.

Neville Longbottom (Harry Potter Movies)

Never could Harry Potter fans been able to guess that Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) would turn out to play a pivotal and courageous role in the fight against Voldemort and his Death Eaters. During his first year at Hogwarts, the young wizard was one of the school's most helplessly clumsy students.

Cosmo Kramer (Seinfeld)

Michael Richards' role in the Seinfeld cast — Jerry's eccentric, high-energy neighbor — is not the person he was in the pilot episode, and not just because he was called "Kessler" then. At that time, the man who would be known as Kramer was a slow-witted, meandering oaf who never even left his apartment.

Marcus Brody (The Indiana Jones Movies)

Despite having a much smaller role in 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, it is clear that Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) was intended to be a competent authority figure who may have even been more like Harrison Ford's daring archeologist in his youth. However, in 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he is portrayed as the absent-minded comic relief who "got lost in his own museum once."

Drax (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Although Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) is unable to recognize sarcasm or any non-literal language, he boasts an intimidating stoicism that, in addition to his heft and strength, makes him the most fearsome member of the Guardians of the Galaxy in their 2014 cinematic debut. In later MCU installments, however, his stoicism is thrown completely out the window in favor of comically exaggerating his social shortcomings, making him more of a lovable man-child.

Winston Bishop (New Girl)

When Lamorne Morris joined the New Girl cast as Winston, he did not seem like much more than a basic fill-in for Coach, boasting some of the same characteristics as Damon Wayans Jr.'s role. Over time, however, Winston really came into his own, proving to be one of the loft's most sincere and multi-layered residents.

Carol Peletier (The Walking Dead)

Early on, fans of The Walking Dead probably would have bet that Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) was the least likely to survive in a world overrun with the dead. However, it was clear by Season 3 that the apocalypse and other tragic circumstances — most notably the death of her daughter, Sophia — only made her a stronger person who would even go to unimaginable lengths to survive.

Cady Heron (Mean Girls)

After initially conspiring against Regina George (Rachel McAdams) by infiltrating her clique, Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) begins to act more and more like the self-absorbed popular girl and even becomes the Plastics' default replacement leader. Luckily, the mathlete rediscovers her true self by the end of Mean Girls after learning some much-needed lessons about the high school social scene.

Sandy Olsson (Grease)

Grease is a coming-of-age musical classic about two people who could not be more different trying to rekindle their summertime romance by being more like the other. Ultimately, it is Australian-born Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) who sheds her "good girl" reputation for greaser Danny Zuko (John Travolta), who mostly stays the same by the end.

Topanga Lawrence (Boy Meets World)

There are quite a few notable examples of Boy Meets World characters undergoing dramatic changes, but one of the more drastic and sudden is that of Topanga Matthews (née Lawrence). Danielle Fishel's character was introduced as an eccentric flower child, but evolved into a perfectly average (but also highly motivated) student by her freshman year of high school.

Leslie Knope (Parks and Recreation)

On Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope's bubbly, kindhearted personality almost convinces you that there are career politicians worth trusting and even having as a friend. However, when the mockumentary series first debuted, she was more like the kind of career politician that SNL (speaking of Amy Poehler) loves to mock.

Eli Moskowitz (Cobra Kai)

On Cobra Kai, Eli Moskowitz (Jacob Bertrand) is first introduced as a shy kid who is regularly bullied for his cleft lip, which is what inspires him to take martial arts lessons in the first place. As his skills begin to develop, so does the confidence of this formidable fighter, who also later goes by the nickname Hawk.

Luke Hobbs (The Fast And Furious Movies)

When Dwayne Johnson joined the Fast and Furious franchise as Luke Hobbs, he played the DSS Agent with an earnest, no-nonsense demeanor that perfectly juxtaposed the series’ increasingly absurd tone. Over time, however, the character seemed to swerve into the skid and played along with the jokes with a sense of humor that resembles most of the wrestler-turned-actor's roles since.

Derek Vinyard (American History X)

In American History X, the murder of his firefighter father (William Russ) by a Black man inspires Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) to become a murderous skinhead, eventually leading him to incarceration. When he is released, he has thankfully let go of his prejudices but then must prevent his younger brother, Danny (Edward Furlong), from going down the same violent, hateful path.

While some of these characters changed for the better, there are quite a few that we might say changed for the worse. Either way, for the most part, it made for some great entertainment at the movies or from your television screen.