James McAvoy breaks out the guns in Wanted

The insane action epic Wanted opens today (Ed. note: It's mad fun. Seriously.), and Scottish actor James McAvoy plays an everyman who's given the chance to become an action hero. From the pic above, it's obvious that James isn't an everyman, but a buff He-God. It's a far cry from how I remember him best, as Mr. Tumnus, the faun, in The Chronicles of Narnia:

Lots of actors try image changes in their career, but one of the toughest to pull off must be when actors try to break out of the "boyish, sensitive" mold and transform themselves into bad boys or kick-ass superheroes. Here are a few more examples of actors who went (with varying degrees of success) from wimp ... to pimp. (I know that was horrible, but it rhymed.)

Tobey Maguire

When the sensitive lad from The Ice Storm, The Cider House Rules, and Pleasantville was cast in the long awaited big screen version of Spider-Man, people scoffed at the idea ... until they saw him shirtless in the movie. I clearly remember the audible gasps in the theater when he stood in front of the mirror, and the jealous straight guy in front of me who turned to his girlfriend and whispered, "It must be CGI."

Ben Foster

I knew Ben primarily from when he was a kid on the tv show Flash Forward, and as that creepy guy on Six Feet Under, so I was not prepared for it when he spread his wings in X-Men:The Last Stand. Unfortunately, he was only in the movie for literally five minutes (rip-off!), because I would have loved to have seen him really spread them wide.

See more transformations after the break!