As soon as I read this, I thought of Lance Armstrong in Dodgeball. Such a silly, over-the-top movie, and he still stood out as totally NOT able to act. Even Laser, Blazer and Taser were better actors, and they had nothing to say. 
But the intention of the OP was not “who does the same role everytime”. I think some actors get in a niche where they are acting but it is the same character. Like in my OP I used Richard Gere as an example. He plays the same roles over and over but I’ve seen him in interviews and he’s a different guy in real life. Now take Christopher Walken. Capt Koons in Pulp Fiction is the exact same as Duane Hall in Annie Hall and The Continental in SNL AND (here the important point) the same as Christopher Walken doing interviews on David Letterman.
I’m looking for examples of the second kind.
I read a quote from Spencer Tracy a long while back where he said he didn’t act, he just showed up and behaved like himself. I haven’t seen enough of his films to know if he played that broad a range…
James Stewart was one of the finest actors of the pre-Method era. I’ve got around 40 of his films on DVD, and there’s not one performance that’s disappointed me. For all the lovable charm, he could be a remarkable tough guy when the role called for it. Not in the blustering way John Wayne often was, but in a much quieter and subtler way. The best examples of this would be Rear Window, and the westerns he made in the early 50s with Anthony Mann.
Speaking of Wayne, it’s true that he was often typecast. It wasn’t Ford that created that character - he’d been in probably 50 westerns before Stagecoach, but it was Ford that recognised it and took him out of b-movies into the mainstream. I have far too many of his films on DVD, probably approaching 100, and whilst there are some that are disappointing (the aforementioned The Conqueror chief among them), there are a good number of great performances. Watch The Shepherd Of The Hills, Sands Of Iwo Jima, Red River, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Cowboys and The Shootist, then tell me he’s a one-note performer.
ETA- I’m 34, and English, so not exactly in the demographic for blind adulation of John Wayne.
Even though she is hot, I’m going to have to go with megan fox, she is just not believable.
My vote goes to John Wayne. Whether a cowboy or a GI, IMHO, he played John Wayne.
~VOW
Wayne could act. John Ford loved directing him, and even he thought Wayne was always playing variations of the same character until one day while on the set of “The Quiet Man” Ford remarked: “Who knew the big lug could act?” Well, Ford did. That was why he used Wayne whenever possible. Wayne did phone in a lot of movies, but he also made a lot of classics.
Compare True Grit with Wayne and Bridges. Jeff Bridges did a great job acting in the remake, but he did not carry the movie, the little girl did. Wayne made the same character carry the same movie in the original next to the awful acting of the girl and Glenn Campbell. The original is quite watchable despite its flaws because Wayne played an interesting loser drunk that he had not played before.
I didn’t like Wayne’s politics, but he was an excellent actor.
That was in a 50 worst movies ever book. I need to see if I can put it on my Netflix queue.
If I’m ever in a self-hating mood.
You think Walken isn’t acting on Letterman? If his PR people and he want to project a certain image, so that moviegoers won’t be surprised, he’ll stay in character during the interview. If he’s the same way on Fresh Air, then I believe he can only act like himself.
I don’t watch late night shows these days, but almost everyone who came onto Carson stayed in character. People mostly aren’t as blatant about their characters as Jack Benny (or Colbert) but people care about those bookings.
Drew Barrymore.
Substitute Nick Cage for John Wayne and you might have something!
Charlie Sheen
(dammit, why did Chuck Lorre have to decide to go all “he hurt my pride” and ruin the best sitcom out there?)
He does, and people hated him for it.
First of all, the story of True Grit is Mattie’s story, and Bridges was a good enough actor to embody the role while letting Hallie Steinfeld carry the film. Wayne was so larger than life that he overshadowed other performers even when he was not the main character. (This worked to his favor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where he basically undermined his stock cowboy routine by playing straight.) Second, Wayne played a loser drunk both before and after True Grit, albeit never quite with the gleeful embracement as in that role. Third, there are really two films where Wayne truly diverged from his stock persona: the previously mentioned The Quiet Man and The Shootist, which doesn’t really speak to a great deal of range.
Wayne was good at what he did, but mostly what he did is play John Wayne, or at least the public and screen persona of John Wayne, the movie star.
My vote is Joe Pesci. He’s always shades of the same character, whether the sociopathic mobster in Goodfellas or the joking Brooklyn mechanic-cum-lawyer in My Cousin Vinny, and is about the same abrasive wise-ass in real life. I always enjoy him, especially when played off against a good straight man, but his range is pretty narrow.
Stranger
If I may, I’d like to suggest that he isn’t those things in:
Where the Buffalo Roam
The Razor’s Edge
What About Bob?
Mad Dog and Glory
Ed Wood
Rushmore
The Royal Tennenbaums
Lost in Translation
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Broken Flowers
There are others as well, but this is a good list.
I always considered John Wayne as a cowboy who lucked out and hit the big time. That isn’t a dig, it’s why he filled those roles so perfectly. The same could probably be said of James Garner, and he’d probably admit it himself. (I think they’d both say it took a helluva lot of work to make it, though.)
I was gonna get all set to argue with you, because I do love me some Pesci, but alas…
Everyone of his major characters at their base levels reacts to stress in the same way- aggressively. The tactics might be different but the strategy is always - “Get challenged, over compensate aggressively.” Its such a core principle in his most of his roles that you can to see it as the defining feature of any character he puts forth.
Now that’s not to say that he can’t make the character believable and empathizable, which I think should be the main goal of a actor.
The range of a Daisy BB rifle maybe.
Yeah, if Hanks has any real range he hasn’t exercised it in a long time. Even in Castaway it was kind of a toss-up between him and Wilson, and I was rooting for the ball. Nice guy, makes good choices in roles, but his acting range is small caliber.
Stranger
I would say that the Mattie was the main character in the latter because it was written, directed and edited that way. Same for the previous film only in favor of the Rooster character. Nothing to do with acting ability.
Jeff Goldblum: saw him on Jimmy Fallon. I was facinated that he was facinated with hands. I’m glad that he’s really that way.