Which celebrity has all the range? Twitter’s latest meme has some answers

By Joe Berkowitz

Just a few weeks after the Dolly Parton Challenge gave celebrities a cheeky chance to show off their many-splendored talents, a new meme has fans worshipping at the altar of range.

Range is variety, adaptability, versatility. Range is the impossibility of being typecast, a sort of anti-Tom Hanks. (Not that we at Fast Co don’t love and respect Tom Hanks, but Tom Hanks has a hard time shedding his Tom Hanksness.) It’s when an actor’s chameleonic skills are so powerful, they can reliably disappear deep into character time and time again.

The meme celebrating this particular talent finds Twitter users posting an image grid with four representative roles from an actor’s catalog, with the caption, “I don’t know who needs to hear this , but no one has the range.” (The implication is that no one has the range except the person in the photos, duh.)

The meme appears to have started last Saturday with a tweet about Margot Robbie, who some say has proven to be one of our range-iest actors over the past decade.

After the tweet went viral, people started adding their own versatile faves like Stanley Tucci, Cate Blanchett, and Samuel L. Jackson into the same thread, with some of those tweets going semi-viral as well.

From there, Twitterers began making cases for other worthy talent outside of that initial thread, mercifully abandoning the tired “I don’t know who needs to hear this” intro in many cases.

At least one actor was happy to see himself get the range treatment.

The meme format also allows for semi-esoteric jokes, like this one for anybody familiar with the casting change that took place between Iron Man and Iron Man 2.

As the meme spread, it moved beyond traditional acting and into other realms as well.

The meme became so popular, in fact, that brands are already ruining it.

Well, that was fun while it lasted!

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