# Good actors with crappy typecasts?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 4, 2006, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777 "2006-12-04T01:43:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Surbey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surbey)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/1 "2006-12-04T01:43:03Z")
The one that hits me first is \*\* Greg Germann\*\*. I think he’s a good actor and I’ve seen him execute some hard roles but they always seem to be shitty. Either the shitty boss who’s out to get someone, or the shitty co-worker that’s out to off someone, the list goes on.
And you?
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### Author:  [@Surbey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surbey)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/2 "2006-12-04T01:51:15Z")
[Greg Germann on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0314548/)
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/3 "2006-12-04T01:57:50Z")
[Christine Baranski](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v515/bloodylamer/bastardly-photos/0505/album17/christine-baranski-04170603.jpg), a tall classy comedienne with a hoarse boudoir voice, a way with one-liners and about 9 miles of legs. Usually plays a stock society wife with nothing to do or say.
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### Author:  [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/4 "2006-12-04T02:33:17Z")
[QUOTE=Surbey]
[Greg Germann on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0314548/)
[/QUOTE]
… I’m actually a big fan of his… and I think he plays a variety of different roles. Christ Almighty, you linked to his IMDB and that pretty much cinches it that he has a pretty broad range and works in that range quite a bit.
His character from Ned and Stacey (a pussywhipped husband) and his part on Ally McBeal (skirt chasing ruthless lawyer) couldn’t be farther a part.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/5 "2006-12-04T02:56:29Z")
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
[Christine Baranski](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v515/bloodylamer/bastardly-photos/0505/album17/christine-baranski-04170603.jpg), a tall classy comedienne with a hoarse boudoir voice, a way with one-liners and about 9 miles of legs. Usually plays a stock society wife with nothing to do or say.
[/QUOTE]
And she was the recipients of one of the greatest bits of miscasting in cinema: Mary Sunshine in **Chicago**. Anyone who saw the play knows why (though, to be fair, the movie couldn’t have cast the role the same way).
I think of Cindy Williams. She showed great promise as an actress in two of the best films of the 70s – **American Grafitti** and **The Conversation** – but got cast in **Laverne and Shirley** was was never taken seriously again.
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### Author:  [@Millit\_the\_Frail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Millit_the_Frail)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/6 "2006-12-04T03:11:46Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
And she was the recipients of one of the greatest bits of miscasting in cinema: Mary Sunshine in **Chicago**. Anyone who saw the play knows why (though, to be fair, the movie couldn’t have cast the role the same way).
[/QUOTE]
If you don’t mind, could you explain what you mean about the casting of the role in the play? I loved the movie but have never seen the play. (Someday, when I’ve got a little more cash lying around…) Hope this isn’t a hijack, I’m just very curious.
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### Author:  [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/7 "2006-12-04T03:17:16Z")
[QUOTE=Millit the Frail]
If you don’t mind, could you explain what you mean about the casting of the role in the play? I loved the movie but have never seen the play. (Someday, when I’ve got a little more cash lying around…) Hope this isn’t a hijack, I’m just very curious.
[/QUOTE]
The role is played on stage by men
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### Author:  [@Only\_Mostly\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Only_Mostly_Dead)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/8 "2006-12-04T03:22:50Z")
[QUOTE=Millit the Frail]
If you don’t mind, could you explain what you mean about the casting of the role in the play? I loved the movie but have never seen the play. (Someday, when I’ve got a little more cash lying around…) Hope this isn’t a hijack, I’m just very curious.
[/QUOTE]
Moral Miss Sunshine is actually a man in drag.
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### Author:  [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/9 "2006-12-04T17:33:39Z")
S’funny, but I just happened to watch **Nashville** last night and couldn’t help thinking about poor old Ned Beatty. A great actor who worked in some great flicks (Nashville, Superman, Network), and very good at playing a variety of roles. But still, when all is said & done, he’s the guy who ‘squealed like a pig.’
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### Author:  [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/10 "2006-12-04T17:49:07Z")
**Jean-Claude Van Damme**. I mean, the guy is probably the most subtle, most nuanced, the most flat-out gifted dramatic male lead since vintage Brando. Yet he’s most often cast as a [French/Franch-Canadian/Louisiana French] practitioner of [Karate/kickboxing] who is on the run from [The French Foreign Legion/The U.S. Army/drug dealers]. It’s really a shame.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/11 "2006-12-04T18:10:18Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
**Jean-Claude Van Damme**. I mean, the guy is probably the most subtle, most nuanced, the most flat-out gifted dramatic male lead since vintage Brando.
[/QUOTE]
Cite?
(Or, alternately, Woosh?)
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### Author:  [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/12 "2006-12-04T18:20:38Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Cite?
(Or, alternately, Woosh?)
[/QUOTE]
Whoosh. Van Damme is horrible, even for an action movie star. He’s so bad that they had to write plot elements into all of his movies to explain his accent, which he’s never been able to lose. That was actually the joke of my post.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/13 "2006-12-04T18:21:56Z")
**Fred Gwynne** – the guy was a versatile actor (and children’s book author), but once he platyed Herman Munster, a lot of people couldn’t see him as anything else. Before that role (and before **Car 54 Where Are You?** , which woulda typecast him in a different way if The Munsters had never existed) he had some stuff, and at the end of his life he started getting good roles again. I saw him on Broadway shortly before he died, playing the lead in a mystery.
One of my high school teachers bemoaned the fact that **Richard Baseheart** got stuck playing Admiral Nelson on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had range, too.
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### Author:  [@jali](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jali)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/14 "2006-12-04T21:33:16Z")
This is NOT a whoosh:
I think Ashton Kucher is a decent actor but will be remembered for his &0’s Show role.
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### Author:  [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/15 "2006-12-04T21:57:17Z")
Anthony Perkins. A fine, fine character actor, and he never got past the typecasting he encountered after _Psycho_.
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### Author:  [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2006, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/16 "2006-12-04T22:12:44Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
Whoosh. Van Damme is horrible, even for an action movie star. He’s so bad that they had to write plot elements into all of his movies to explain his accent, which he’s never been able to lose. That was actually the joke of my post.
[/QUOTE]
One of the great joys of _Street Fighter_ (a movie full of innumerable great joys) is Van Damme’s role as red-blooded American soldier Guile, and his absolutely unintelligible accent. I probably saw it 20 times before I realized why he called Raul Julia a “six of a bitch” (“sick son of a bitch”). Oh well, six of a bitch, one half dozen of the other.
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### Author:  [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2006, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/17 "2006-12-05T00:11:58Z")
The late character actor Brion James occasionally got to play a sympathetic role, but typically played total A-holes – either psycho killers, low-life criminals or a variety of thugs and henchmen. Probably a nice guy in real life, but he happened to make a really good big, scary-looking guy who just might take a length of steel rebar and beat your head in.
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### Author:  [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2006, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/18 "2006-12-05T02:43:51Z")
Morgan Freeman has been typecast pretty badly over the last few years as the wise old fatherly sage. They even made him play God in that Jim Carrey movie a few years back for christsake. He’s a much better actor than the one dimensional roles that he has been getting let on.
I didn’t much care for Lucky Number Slevin but I was relieved to see Freeman finally play a bad guy. The scenes with him and Ben Kingsley soared.
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2006, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/19 "2006-12-05T02:55:17Z")
[QUOTE=Only Mostly Dead]
Moral Miss Sunshine is actually a man in drag.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, OK. However, Christine has kinda become a gay icon (which gives me pause, as I liked her for more biological reasons).
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2006, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-actors-with-crappy-typecasts/382777/20 "2006-12-05T03:17:21Z")
I always thought Julia Duffy was capable of being, if not the second coming of Meryl Streep, at least a capable dramatic actress. However, she played the spoiled ice princess so well in _Newhart_ and other sitcoms that she never had the chance.
She’s in her mid-50’s now, and a little past the ingenue stage.
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