How about I Dream Of Jeannie? Barbara Eden played Jeannie and her sister Jeannie.
Patty Duke
Phoebe and Ursula on Friends
Bill Daily was on I Dream Of Jeannie and The Bob Newheart Show.
Rue McClanahan: Maude, Mama’s Family, and Golden Girls.
Patty Duke
Phoebe and Ursula on Friends **
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Elizabeth Montgomery. Samantha and Serena on Bewitched
Lots of actors have done this as a one-shot appearance, (a man playing his own sister or something). David Schwimmer on Friends did it, too, playing Russ, the guy who looked like Ross.
Martin Lawrence was the king of this on Martin.
And does anyone think Bill Daily looks like Bill O’Reilly from Fox News?
He also played Steve Frame (back from the dead) on Another World.
George Clooney was also on Roseanne the first season as her boss Booker. He might get the award for the actor who has bailed out of more successful series than any other.
On that note, how about actors who play the same character on multiple shows? I think the hands down winner on that score would be Richard Belzer, who has portrayed Det. John Munch on Homicide, Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Kelsey Grammer on Cheers, and of course, Fraiser, but he also played Fraiser in an Emmy-winning guest spot on Wings. So he also has three.
Many shows have done crossovers, or spin-offs, or were set in the same universe.
Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Pettycoat Junction
The Practice, Ally McBeal
Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, a few more lame spin-offs
Homicide, L&O
Startrek: TNG, Deep Space 9, Startrek: TOS
What shows shared universes but weren’t really spin-offs?
Armin Shimmerman was Quark on DS9, and also guest spotted in one episode of TNG and the pilot for Voyager, as well as appearing in deleted sceens in Star Trek:Insurrection. If we did trek guest stars in multiple guest roles, we’d need to open a new thread…
Funny. I always thought that is was Avery Brooks who played Torque in A Man Called Sloane, but now I discover that it was someone else entirely, Ji-Tu Cumbuka. My bad.
William Conrad as Cannon (A QM PRODUCTION!!!) and as the overweight half of Jake and The Fat Man.
Sir Rhosis
Friends and Mad About You
Martin Milner of Route 66 and Adam-12.
I’m trying to come up with some sort of wit about “number series” but I’m getting nothing beyond the phrase itself…
For someone playing two different characters:
Steve Williams:
As Stone Cold Steve Austin in WWF Smackdown,
Stunning Steve Austin in WCW Worldwide (belive me, these two characters are very differnent)
and
The hard-boiled cop in Walker, Texas Ranger
Some of the entries in this thread don’t really seem to qualify per the original post, but I think a really big, really solid example has been missed (if I missed it being mentioned, I apologize).
This actor was on television for eighteen straight seasons. First he was accepted for 10 seasons in one show, and then the very next season he began a new show and lasted another eight seasons.
The actor?
Raymond Burr
Perry Mason, 1957-1966
Ironside, 1967-1975
Has any other actor been on fictional prime time TV for so many straight seasons (Kelsey Grammer is getting close)?
And also the loose cannon cop on Nash Bridges.
Even more prolific is Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who has voiced the Federation computer in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and several of the movies. She also played Dr. Chapel in TOS and the movies, and Lwaxana Troi in TNG and DS9.
No qualifier needed. That was very good–I missed that one.