Some of my favorite films have him in a starring role, but those roles fit him; he doesn’t have the range to make himself fit a role. I guess it was a good thing that Sydney Pollack didn’t even try to convince Redford to put on an English accent. The results may have been Dick van Dyke-level awful. Denys Finch Hatton is an aristocratic, cynical British ex-pat living in British East Africa and Redford doesn’t even come close to fitting that description.
Nevertheless, Out of Africa remains one of my favorite movies. Most of that is due to Meryl Streep and a terrific supporting cast, including Michael Kitchen as Berkeley-Cole. He plays the role of the British ex-pat perfectly. The other reason it remains one of my all time favorites is that I can magically project Jeremy Irons face and voice over Redford’s for the entire movie. Irons would have been perfect as Finch Hatton without ever breaking a sweat. Oh well. Bygones.
I saw Chicago on Broadway a couple of years ago. Having only seen the movie before that I thought the twist for Sunshine was something they had come up with for that production. I didn’t realize that it was standard for the character. Even on stage however, her looks were suspicious. It was only her incredible the voice work that gave me doubts.
Funny, before I even read your OP, Albert Finney is who came to my mind as well. In my case it was for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, though. I thought he was great in Big Fish but really horrible in Devil. And that thing he does where he leaves his mouth hanging open was really distracting, too…
Michelle Pfeiffer, a fine actress in general, played the waitress Frankie in Frankie and Johnny, a role written for a middle aged plain-Jane and originated on stage by (pre Misery) Kathy Bates. Nobody would believe Michelle as a plain Jane or as a woman likely to fall in love with a penniless ex-con played by middle aged Al Pacino.
If TV series count, I think The Tudors holds some sort of record for truly awful casting of talented actors, none moreso of course than Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII. At 50 the most famous morbidly obese, erectile dysfunctional, barely-able-to-walk-from-numerous-ailments and generally gross and prematurely old monarch in the history of the world still has visibly delineated abs, a handsome face, a youthful countenance and tight buns. (The real Henry is alleged to have had an official ass wiper by this time due to his inability to care for his most basic hygiene.)
Colin Firth in Valmont. He might not have been particularly “incorrectly-cast”, but the guy who had the same role a year earlier in Dangerous Liaisons (John Malkovich) owned his movie, and Colin suffers for the comparison.
Don’t think Annette Bening and Meg Tilly were all that well-cast either (in Valmont).
Pretty much the entire cast of The Ten Commandments. It’s not just that most weren’t Jewish or that they didn’t look Middle Eastern so much as they were mostly too old (Anne Baxter especially), the fact that Yul and Charlton had been raised as brothers but one had a thick accent and bald head and the other looked like Charlton Heston and neither sounded like their English father, and don’t even start on Edward G. Robinson.
I had real trouble with Matt Damon and Ed Norton in Rounders as poker wizards who knew the poker underworld and all those hardened characters that orbit in it. Those roles screamed for older actors.
Natalie Portman is often overhyped as a nympho-waif sex goddeas, when she is better served as a straight actress. She has been miscast in most of her rolls.
Not sure I understand this one? If they had been older actors, then it would have been harder to accept them making some of the basic mistakes that Damon and Norton showed in the movie. An older actor, playing somebody experienced in the poker underworld, would never have played above his bankroll like Damon did at the beginning of the movie, or have cheated so obviously as Norton did at the Cops poker game.
The role needed younger actors, full of themselves and learning the hard way.
For me, another “if you cared about the book” example is Michael Gambon as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series.
Actually, I don’t even really care that much about the book, and “Harry Potter” is something I try not to get worked up about, but I think Michael Gambon is absolutely awful as Dumbledore. Because of his acting, to me the book Dumbledore and the movie Dumbledore come across as two completely different characters.
People who haven’t read the series wouldn’t notice any difference, however, and so your broomstick mileage might vary.
