The 2019 British crime film, "The Gentlemen," was indeed a bit of a departure for Henry Golding, but it's now seeming like just the first step towards a more diverse film career.

Having burst onto the American film scene just a year earlier in the surprise hit romantic comedy, "Crazy Rich Asians," it suddenly seemed everyone wanted to be in the Henry Golding business.

Two more similar roles followed in quick succession that threatened to pigeonhole him as a romantic lead — mystery comedy "A Simple Favor" (2018) and the holiday romance "Last Christmas" (2019).

Later in 2019, he played the villainous gangster Dry Eye in "The Gentlemen," the Guy Ritchie crime picture. It was a smaller role than the previous three but a much more prestigious one — the film was writer-director Ritchie's long-awaited return to form and also starred such screen luminaries as Matthew McConaughey and Hugh Grant (two other guys trying to distance themselves from their rom-com pasts).

If that seemed like a big step away from romantic comedy, get a load of Golding's next gig: he recently completed filming the upcoming action flick "Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins," in which he plays the title character, a member of the G.I. Joe commando unit who is also a ninja (these are based on kids toys, remember).

Hollywood has good reason to have faith in Golding. Each of his first four films more than quadrupled their budgets, which is an almost unbelievable box office run that few, if any, film stars have been able to match.

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