In Back to the Future II, Michael J Fox plays his son and his daughter (as well as himself) in 2015. In III, he plays his great grandfather in 1885.
Tony Randall in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao
Maybe not the most, but a contender.
Millicent Martin plays four roles in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.
The play “Elsinore”, adapted by Robert LePage is a one-man version of “Hamlet”. The play within a play is done as a ‘puppet’ show with a lute, a recorder and a horn, and the stage manager and assistant stage manager are used as body doubles, but all the spoken lines are done by the same performer.
Not a film, I realize, but, in my opinion, all the more impressive for that.
If memory serves, Jerry Lewis did a comedy back in the 1960’s,* The Family Jewels*, in which he played seven different characters. The plot was something along the lines of a young orphaned heiress chooses among six uncles to live with. JL played all six, as well as her chauffeur/close pal.
Love, Phil
I haven’t counted them all up, but Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life has multiple actors playing multiple roles.
Same with quite a few Python films, actually.
I was a little disappointed to learn that Randall didn’t play the “Abominable Snowman” – he didn’t want to get in the heavy, sweaty costiume, especially since you couldn’t see his face. On the other hand, he does appear in the background of one scene totally sans makeup, in the audience, so he does play seven roles in the film.
Cheech Marin had 3 rôles in From Dusk Till Dawn.
Refresh my memory. I only remember him playing Bert.
He also played Mr. Dawes, the old guy at the bank.
Deborah Kerr played 3 different girls in the The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp.
[Nitpick]Actually, it’s six. The Loch Ness Monster was played by a guppy in a fish bowl (small version) and a stop-motion animated model (large version).[/Nitpick]
Useless trivia about The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao: Peter Sellers was the first choice for the role(s) but he was too busy so Randall was hired instead.
Ah…okay! We saw the first half of the movie this past weekend (we had an event to attend so we didn’t have time to watch the second half), and I didn’t remember seeing him as anyone but Bert in that half.
It took me a long time before I realized that the seventh face (in the movie) is Medusa.
For which he’s credited as “Nackvid Keyd,” (an anagram) at least on the soundtrack. I seem to recall that the film including the same credit but don’t remember if it unscrambles.
To go off-premise for a moment, the play The Mystery of Irma Vep has eight characters that are played by two actors.
I don’t see an embargo on identical twins so I propose Jeremy Irons as Beverly & Elliot Mantle in Dead Ringers and Louis Hayward (amongst others) as King Louis XIV & Philippe of Gascony in The Man in the Iron Mask.
Not only does it unscramble, it does so with animated letters. You gotta watch the film – this is arguably an early example of “things at the end of the credits you have to see”
Jack Lemmon in The Great Race, as both Professor Fate and Crown Prince Hapnick and…
…Professor Fate pretending to be Prince Hapnick.
Lupino Lane made film in 1929 called Only Me in which he plays 24 roles. I haven’t seen it, but here’s the IMDb description:
“A well-dressed but inebriated man decides to attend a variety show at the Palace Theatre. During the show, both he and the performers are continually harassed by a practical joke-loving boy who is sitting in a box seat near the stage. Soon the inebriated man himself begins to cause disruptions, with his overly emphatic opinions of the various acts.”
ISTR this being cited as holding the record for most roles by the same person in a single film. But if from_a_to_z is right about Keaton’s film, either my source or my memory is wrong. (Won’t be the first time.)
Jackie Chan and Jet Li, both, in The Forbidden Kingdom