Typecast actors are those who become so strongly associated with a certain role that it becomes hard for audiences to accept them as any other character.
Who are some actors who are not generally considered to be typecast, but who you personally always associate with a particular character or role, to the extent that it’s only you who can’t see past it?
For me and my partner, it has to be Bill Irwin. Despite being a versatile, award-winning performer appearing in all sorts of comedies and dramas, for us he will always be Pickles, Harry Solomon’s alien dog on 3rd Rock from the Sun:
Whenever he pops up in some show we’re watching (most recently an utterly serious role in the costume drama The Gilded Age), we immediately jump out of our seats, frantically point at the screen, and excitedly shout, “It’s Pickles! Pickles!!”
Poor Bill—I’m sure this isn’t the role you wanted us to remember you for, but you nailed that dog so well that we’ll never see you as anything else.
