I think it’s especially difficult for television actors. The first time I saw Ed O’Neill outside of Married with Children was his cameo in Wayne’s World where he had a rather short but memorable monologue. “Why is it when a man kills another man in battle it’s called heroic, yet if he kills a man in the heat of passion it’s called murder?” The first thing I thought upon seeing him in Wayne’s World was, “Oh, that’s Al Bundy!” But O’Neill is actually a pretty good actor. I just so strongly associated him with one particular role.
Sometimes it’s that the actors do too good a job, although having indelible characters help.
After seeing them on Dobie Gillis, Dwayne Hickman as Dobie, Bob Denver as Maynard, Shelia James as Zelda, and Steve Franken as Chatsworth Osborne Jr. all became typecast in those roles. Audiences just couldn’t see them as anyone else.
I’m now picturing Adam West attempting a straight dramatic role after doing that same ‘straight dramatic role’ voice amidst the campy humor of the 1960s BATMAN primetime series; sure, it’s one thing if a guy who got famous doing a jokey voice now wants to dial it back and deliver lines with calm sincerity, but: after years of delivering calm sincerity in that Don’t Take This Seriously context…?
Ironically I have not heard of any of the actors in those early versions.
Danny McBride always shows up in projects as Danny McBride playing The Guy Danny McBride Always Plays. But also his 3 biggest projects where he plays that character, he is the lead actor, writer and producer. So I think he’s out there pigeon-holeing himself.
Mindy Kaling seems to be doing that for herself too.
He was pretty good as the sleazy photographer in Blowout.
In the Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, there are a couple of episodes where they discussed the movie Hot Rod. They cast Danny McBride as one of Rod’s best friends. Danny asked if they had any direction about how he should play the character, and they sheepishly replied “We hoped you would basically just do your character from The Foot Fist Way”.
This thread reminds me of Roger Ebert’s review of Heat: “De Niro and Pacino, veterans of so many great films in the crime genre, have by now spent more time playing cops and thieves than most cops and thieves have. There is always talk about how actors study people to base their characters on. At this point in their careers, if Pacino and De Niro go out to study a cop or a robber, it’s likely their subject will have modeled himself on their performances in old movies. There is absolute precision of effect here, the feeling of roles assumed instinctively.”
There’s sometimes a sad ethnic component to casting. I know an actress of Mediterranean background who is stunningly gorgeous, with olive skin and long black curly hair, who told me sadly once how she gets called in all the time for “gypsy and hooker roles.”
David Mamet’s film Redbelt featured both O’Neill and Tim Allen in the latter’s only non-comedy role, and both were very good. Speaking of Mamet, David Rasche went almost straight from the set of Sledge Hammer! to a Broadway production of Speed-the-Plow. I loved that show (Sledge Hammer!, I mean) and for years had a hard time imagining Rasche in anything other than deadpan surreal slapstick, and then he’d show up in something like United 93 or Flags of Our Fathers. Something about actors from Chicago, I guess.
This kind of thing goes way back in Hollywood. John Wayne always played John Wayne. Eventually Cary Grant only played Cary Grant. It wasn’t about their roles, it was the character that people wanted to see. This is an extension of type-casting perhaps, but more often intentionally done to create something larger than the actor, their character, or the role.
At least one actor died to avoid typecasting:
“Laird’s obsession with avoiding the inevitable stereotype as a “heavy heavy” and wistful pursuit of a romantic leading man career compelled him to go on a reckless, unsupervised crash diet (from 300 lbs to 200 lbs), which is evident by his drastically trimmed-down look in his last film. This proved too strenuous on his system and he was forced to undergo surgery for a severe stomach disorder. His 30-year-old heart gave out on the morning of December 9, 1944, only days after his operation.” - Laird Cregar - Biography - IMDb
He was also a COLUMBO villain, which of course means his role involves unconvincingly explaining scene-of-the-crime stuff to the pride of the LAPD, that’s a given. But the twist is, he’s one of Columbo’s badge-flashing and gun-wielding colleagues on the force, which means he also patiently explains police work to the lieutenant, with the upbeat overconfidence of a cop who thinks he’s a step ahead of everyone else, but, y’know, isn’t.
And, for bonus points: off the top of my head, he’s the only killer on the series I can recall who — having never met the victim before — builds up to the murder by cheerfully introducing himself under false pretenses and carrying on a disingenuous chat: blandly smiling his way through the conversation while only ever clearly thinking, hey, can I shoot this guy yet?
I’d like to think I’d have given him a fair shake as, like, a dentist trying to get away with poisoning someone, but, c’mon.
When Will Smith is attached to a movie, he has a writer come in to change the dialogue to make it more Will Smithier. I imagine some actors purposely play into the type-casting because they feel it helps their careers.
I just recalled one of the ultimate typecast actors: William Boyett
You probably don’t recognize the name, but back in the 50s and 60s he was very busy in small roles and almost always played a cop. He’s best remembered as Reed and Malloy’s boss in *Adam-12," but appeared all over the place, from Highway Patrol to Star Trek: the Next Generation, nearly always as a policeman or the equivalent.
I would use William H. Macy as the opposite of being typecast. Look at what are probably his two best known roles, Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo and Frank Gallagher in Shameless. Two roles that couldn’t be further apart. He’s had a long partnership with David Mamet which lead several roles with Mamet patter but he’s still very different in each role. He can’t change his face which keeps him from being a leading man.
I believe the same is true with Buscemi but to a lesser extent.
I think body type plays a role in typecasting. Arnold Schwartzenegger is typecast for his body. So is Sylvester Stallone. But it also takes a lot of work to have those kinds of bodies so one would imagine they are going for those roles.
Chris Pratt and John Krazinski are examples of guys who started off as “dad bod” types but buffed up for roles and now they’re hanging on to their buffness for more buff guy roles.
British actor Stephen Graham has always played tough guy roles, cuz he has a tough guy look. His last role was a boxer (A Thousand Blows). Oddly enough his current role is “just” as a regular dad in a Netflix series about a family (Adolescence) - but he created, wrote and produced the series so no one was giving him a dad role. He created it.
And as an angel who became mortal in City of Angels. Franz became famous for playing a cop and then retired. He was mostly unknown for most of his career. Sometimes he played cops, sometimes he didn’t. He will forever be known as playing a cop since he walked away after that.
True. And good find. Thank you.
At the same time, somebody financed this project. And that somebody was obviously willing to forego the usual studio play-safe of sticking actors into familiar roles. It would be interesting to learn more about that aspect of this case. Not that I think we can, just the it’s be interesting if we could.
I think about Danny DeVIto - I wonder how many times someone wanted him to be a Louie DePalma clone. He’s got a varied list of credits and is it because he had the power to say “Nope, not gonna do that” or “I want to play that part”?
Robin Williams was another - he certainly wasn’t boxed into Mork from Ork - how much did he have a say in that? He was certainly good enough that he could and did play lots of different characters believably.
So how frustrating must it be for actors who want to do different things…
Even so, I think that Mork was built around Williams’ typical persona in his standup routines: jumping rapidly from topic to topic, a bit manic, and lacking in filters.
That’s not to say that he couldn’t, and didn’t excel in other roles (often dramatic), but he certainly did often play specifically to that typecast (Mork, the Genie in Aladdin, Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam).
But that casting didn’t lock him out of other opportunities. And, yeah, I was thinking especially about his dramatic roles.