Typecasting

[The Burgomaster]

Which actor is the king of "I have played this same role many, many times, and I will continue to play it as long as I keep getting paid"?????

A few suggestions are:

* Robert Vaughn - as I mentioned in another thread, he always seems to play a politician (VIRUS, THE TOWERING INFERNO, BULLITT, etc.)

* Martin Sheen - also shows up as a politician quite a bit . . . especially the President . . . he has even portrayed both JFK and RFK!

* Robert Armstrong (going way back to the 1930s) - a wheeler- dealer showman who always seemed to get in trouble with large gorillas (KING KONG, SON OF KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG)

There are dozens of others.  The door has been left wide open.  Fire away!

[raj]

Christopher Walken as the creepy villian.

[ulthar]

Any action "star:" Arnold, Bruce Willis (he's branched out more than some, I guess), Steven Seagal.  The unbeatable hero is a little wearisome.

George "Buck" Flower as the background bum/sometimes dude with key information to save the day.

[trekgeezer]

Walter Brennan, he was playing old cantankerous guys from the 30's - 70's.

[Shadowphile]

Brian Denehey - tough detective/cop

George Kennedy - Airline pilot/ship captain

Robert Preston - con man

Cheech - sleezy mexican

Chong - burned out stoner

Jason Isaacs - total scumbag

Christopher Lloyd - burned out genius

[AndyC]

Morgan Freeman as the classy, well-spoken authority figure, whether it be government againt, military commander, president or God. He's especially good if you want to break stereotypes and play with audience expectations.

I would have suggested R. Lee Ermey, except that we probably want to distinguish between capable actors who always seem to play the same type and actors who basically have only one shtick. I mean, there's any number of character actors who make a career out of playing the same thing over and over.



Post Edited (10-26-05 18:21)

[Derf]

AndyC wrote:

> I would have suggested R. Lee Ermey, except that we probably
> want to distinguish between capable actors who always seem to
> play the same type and actors who basically have only one
> shtick. I mean, there's any number of character actors who make
> a career out of playing the same thing over and over.
>
Then I guess mentioning "actors" like Will Smith, Ben Affleck (do I hear a duck?), Hugh Grant, Tom Cruise, and all the other stars who basically turn every character into the same person would be in bad taste?

As for a possibly more fitting addition to this list, how about Steve Buscemi, the eternal smarm-meister (I think I like that title!)?

[lester1/2jr]

Richard Gere as guy with too many girls.


I also can't help but think of poor Dusty Springfield.  Her amazing "Dusty In memphis " album clearly had her typecast as some sort of morning sex babe.  She has a sort of lazy singing style, but some of the songs they gave her were sort of one dimensional like "hey it's a nice morning for some of dusty's fine ass".  and she was a lesbian it turns out

[Ash]

Sid Haig once vowed never to play a "heavy" again.
He was typecast for years as a tough bad guy.

www.sidhaig.com

[peter johnson]

Jack Palance, I believe, was once questioned about being typecast as a villian--
He apparently said something to the effect of "Thank God for work!"
So anyway, Jack Palance as the tight-lipped psycho killer.
Klaus Kinski as the tight-lipped psycho killer.
Vincent Price as the lithping lipthed psyco killer.
Christopher Lee as the taught, immediate, vicious psycho killer.
Jackie Chan as the loveable schlub Harold Lloyd act-alike . . . oh, wait, does it count if the actor typecasts himself?
Charles Bronson as Charles Bronson.
* * * *
There's funny stuff in this category:  Edward G. Robinson always played a variety of roles throughout his career (See Scarlet Street), but had a long period from the mid '30's to the late '40's wherein he could only get gangster roles.  He broke out of that only by great diligence & persistence.  Ditto Bogart & to a lesser degree Cagney, but he was safe because he was already known in the industry as a dancer.
Really sad typecasting:  Great Shakespearian actor John Carradine only able to get goofball film roles in zero-budget horror as the requisite Mad Scientist.  Though he made fun of his own "career" in Woody Allen's "Sex" film.
Bela Lugosi, desperate to break from his macabre roles, but noone would touch him --
The Industry is very odd in this regard.  Supposedly, the sign of a great, or even an adequate, actor is to be able to play a variety of roles/different characters.  If you do this, you face the danger of being typed as a "character actor" (Moe Howard), eg., you're only ever called on to do the comedic servant or some other extreme role (Mantan Moreland).  And then they only ever want to see "stars" play the same thing over and over again.  
I once had a director joke with me that they didn't want Peter Johnson for a part, they just wanted a "Peter Johnson Type".
I think Charlize Theron is the single most brilliant and brave actor working today, due to the fact that she will take on anything that plays AGAINST type -- plus she's one Firey Hot Babe . . . oh, don't look at me like that.  I only want to kiss her . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[BoyScoutKevin]

Who is Peter Johnson?
Get me Peter Johnson.
Get me a Peter Johnson type..
Get me a young Peter Johnson..
Who is Peter Johnson?

[peter johnson]

BoyScout:  What?  You've never visited Andrew's locquacious review of my masterpiece, ROBOCHIC, on this very website?
Who are YOU?
Get ye hence, man, and read forthwith!  Click on my name & I pop up holding a shotgun, in character as Gimp, the Satan's Onion . . .
I've done oodles of bad film, much of which never made it out of Colorado, but I have/had a local following from my work on local TV and in short & festival features.  I was in an Academy Award nominated short in '87 or '88 (The Goblin KIng) & etc. etc.  Lots of people here (Vermin) already know my whole bio, so I won't give it again.
You can still find me out there in Kill Line, Robochic(Cyberchic), Ah! Marie!(No, it isn't a porno!), reruns of Homemovies(In Colorado) & short film collections(E.S.S., The Glass Breaker, Powerslaves, etc. etc.).
Am doing Taste of Shakespeare all over Colorado this Fall.
If you've ever worked for Jones CableVision, ABC Cable, VectraBank, Hewlett Packard, or a dozen other corporate entities, then you've seen waaayyy too much of me in their Industrial Training Videos!!
I am a (sometime) working actor.
I am a slut . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[AndyC]

Just thinking of capable actors who get trapped by their own success, I thought of Robert Reed. Classically trained, hard working, quite talented, but once everybody knew him as Mike Brady, that's who he was.

And then there was Werner Klemperer. Quite a talented musician as well as a serious actor. I recall seeing him star as Adolf Eichmann in a serious Nazi movie from his pre-Klink career (John Banner was Rudolf Hoss in that one, so it was hard to suppress the jokes, but I did because it was a good movie). Anyway, for someone who was so widely known as a lovable dimwit, Klemperer had no complaints. He had said, years after the show ended, that a successful TV series is something actors dreamed of, and he was proud to have worked on one that lasted so long, and to have created something so enduring. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.