Actor: Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen spent three decades as a serious dramatic actor, in Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure, before Airplane cast him at fifty-four and changed everything.

The joke is that he does not change his performance at all. Every line is delivered with the same authority he brought to drama, and the surrounding absurdity does the work. He called it playing it absolutely straight.

The Naked Gun films extended it across three entries, and he worked in comedy almost exclusively for the following twenty-five years.

He carried a portable fart machine for decades and used it in interviews, which tells you most of what you need.