When an actor knocks it out of the park with an iconic performance, the sheer impact can follow them for life. Fame is a double-edged sword—it skyrockets their career but can also trap them in that one defining role in the audience’s eyes. Sometimes, a role is so iconic that it overshadows everything else an actor does.
I scared myself!
Trust me, I thought of using this line. But thought better of it. 
Well, THAT’S a pleasant image/metaphor.
Cary Grant once said. “I understand why men wish they were Cary Grant. I wish I was Cary Grant.”
“After The Wizard of Oz (1939), I was typecast as a lion, and there aren’t all that many parts for lions.” - Bert Lahr - Biography - IMDb
His career wasn’t going anywhere before the Wizard of Oz either. His recognition afterward probably brought him more work than he would have had anyway.
He didn’t even get Snagglepuss.
Don’t you mean “He didn’t get Snagglepuss, even!”?
At least I left out “spewing”. Feel free to add it back in where it belongs! 
He was rumored (or more) to be gay.
I wonder how much that was a rueful admission of his vast attractiveness to women, vs. his own disinterest in women and attraction to men. At a time he could not publicly live out the bountiful possibilities of that attraction.
Gotta have been damned frustrating.
His career was, “Exit, stage left.”
It didn’t go from heavens to Murgatroyd.
Reminds me of what McLean Stevenson said after leaving MASH:
I had gotten too big for my britches, I think I’ve never admitted that,
and here I am, talking now to, hopefully, millions of people.So… The thing I didn’t realize was that people really didn’t give two hoots in hell about McLean Stevenson. They loved Henry Blake.
Other example would be
- William Shatner, who had trouble finding work in the 70s after Star trek due to people typecasting him as Kirk. He eventually broke out of that.
- Ed O’Neill, who had trouble finding producers who would take him for anything other than Al Bundy
Brian Thompson – who might be best known as The Judge from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the Alien Bounty Hunter from The X-Files – is refreshingly at peace with his typecasting. He knows that, given the way he looks, he’s gonna play a lot of bruisers and thugs. He’ll take the work.
I met him once. He’s not tall, but he’s impressively large.
It took him a while. As I recall, in the early-mid 1970s, Shatner was doing TV commercials for a Canadian supermarket chain. (Canadians of a certain age should well remember those Shatnerian tones, delivered as he looked into the camera: “Loblaws. Where more than the price is right.”) He got past that, though, and went on acting in movies and TV.
Maybe Adam West should have taken any commercials, voiceovers, community theatre, etc., that came along?
Daniel Radcliffe comes to mind tho he made so much money on Harry Potter he really did not need to work.
but he did
What makes you think he didn’t? (he did)
And have you checked his IMDB profile? He had a lot of work post Batman. Okay, most of it is stuff you’ve never heard of, but he was seldom unemployed.
Heck, you’ve prompted me to contrast that with Burt Ward’s IMDB page: after playing Robin in the ‘60s, he apparently has no credits in ‘71 or ‘72 or ‘73 or ‘74 or ‘75 or ‘76 — and then, after reprising the ‘Robin’ role here and there, no credits in ‘80 or ‘81 or ‘82 or ‘83.
That is pretty much what happened with comedian Daniel Whitney–he pretty much just lives as Larry The Cable Guy now