Sometimes, to play stupid you have to be a genius. Those other times? You´re probably Keanu Reeves.
Bonus: Mira Sorvino- Having graduated Harvard Magna Cum Laude with a degree in East Asian Studies, not to mention a fluency in both French and Mandarin Chinese, you wouldn't have thought Sorvino's break out role would have been portraying a prostitute/ part-time pornstar with limited brains. But that's just what this Jersey gal did in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, portraying the squeaky-voiced Linda so convincingly that it earned this bonafide brainiac an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Sorvino went on to play air head Romy in Romy and Michell's High School Reunion, sticking to stupid role's like her old man sticks to Mobster flicks.
1. Tim Robbins- Despite having degrees from Manhattan´s top-tier Stuyvesant High School and UCLA Film School, Robbins has playing an idiot down to a science. Breaking onto the scene in 1988´s Bull Durham, a crafty Robbins actually got away with playing a character told "not to think." Couldn´t have been a bad gig, ´cause he hasn´t looked back since, capping his career with an Academy Award–winning performance as tragic dumb ass Dave Boyle in 2003´s Mystic River. Talk about riding the short bus to cinematic success!
2. Dolph Lundgren- Dolph's lumbering, monosyllabic symbol of Cold War evil Ivan Drago was, it turns out, just an act. Actually, Lundgren has a master's in chemical engineering and was once offered a Fulbright Scholarship to study at MIT. Seeing as he only had Stallone and Burt Young to talk to on the set of Rocky IV, we can see why he kept so quiet.
3. Stephen Root- This University of Florida alum will forever have a place in the Movie Idiot Hall of Fame (once we secure funding and build it) for playing Milton in Office Space. But the prolific Root is also one of the sharp-whitted Coen Brothers´ favorite character actors, appearing in nuanced flicks like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the upcoming No Country For Old Men.
4. Steve Zahn- Zahn´s characters, like the stoner jailbird in Out of Sight, are like the do-nothing shit sticks you knew in high school who were fucking hilarious, but 10 years later work mall security and inspire more pitty than laughs. Thing is, Zahn went to Harvard, which means he's no shit stick, he just went to school with them.
5. Sean Astin- When he was young and thin, Astin seemed destined to be a leader of men. As Mikey in The Goonies, he was a take-charge kind of kid. But then as he grew up and rounded out, this UCLA grad (with honors, no less) apparently thought, "Why play the rocket-scientist-type when you can coast by playing dopey?" Even in the fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, Astin pretty much played "the cool kid´s dumb, chubby friend."
6. Jack Black- Let´s put it this way: If they´d slapped some fur on Black´s back, they could have saved millions on CGI in that lousy King Kong remake. Jack uses comedy the same way a primate uses his own feces—flinging it around with reckless abandon until something sticks. We know comedians are almost always smarter than they look, but for a guy whose mom once worked on the Hubble telescope, Black wears "moron" impeccably well.
7. Will Forte- Judging by his supremely vacant, emotionless grin, you´d think the dude had a pine branch for a brain stem. But this UCLA alum honed his comedic chops as a writer for Letterman before creating some of SNL´s most memorable characters, as well as The Brothers Solomon. And before you say "Letterman and SNL haven´t been good in years" or "The Brother´s what, now?" stop, because it´ll ruin our argument.
8. Patrick Warburton- As Seinfeld´s Puddy and also as the Tick, Warburton embodied the thick-necked himbo women really mean when they say, "I want a guy with a sense of humor and intellect." But considering he studied marine biology in college and was sired by an orthopedic surgeon, it looks like the empty-headedness ends there. In fact, in 2005 he exchanged his trademark dim-wit for the $50,000 grand prize in GSN´s Poker Royale Celebrities Vs. The Pros.
9. Jeff Daniels- Jeff Daniels was so convincing as Jim Carey´s witless, blank-eyed partner-in-crime Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber that you´d hardly know he at one time considered becoming a doctor. We´re guessing you´d have hardly known that anyway.