No matter how good an actor (so and so) is, he (or she) will always be ______ (role)

Cafe Society
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Earlier this year, the thread If an actor’s entire career had to be reduced to one role… got into the second page of action and some of the posts addressed that other issue as if it were this issue. So, rather than revisiting the older thread, which is probably among the Zombies by now, let’s go down this new road instead.

If you can think of a better case that Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List (1993) as a case where that accomplished actor (or actress) is so well cast and does such a splendid job of being that character that all subsequent appearances make you think back to that role, please add their name(s) to the list here.

Refer to that older thread for instances of an actor’s career being identified with a specific role as a standout performance which has not been equalled in other work afterwards, but try to stay away from that concept in this thread if possible.

Using Fiennes as an example of somebody who has had a pretty wide variety of good roles since that earlier one, and who has done a good job with them, but whose face and mannerisms and style always make you see that earlier role. It may be that Fiennes is not your actor for that criterion. Fine. Who is?

I have other actors in mind (Brando, Nicholson, Pacino, Streep, Dench, dozens more) who can slip into another standout performance and persuade me they are new people. Not Fiennes. No matter how sympathetic the character, Fiennes is always Goeth to me.

And I’m also not talking about one-trick-ponies who have never meant to be anybody but themselves. The list of those types is headed by John Wayne, Adam Sandler, Keanu Reeves, Charles Bronson and Steven Seagal. Not that they’re bad actors (though some definitely are), it’s just that they appear to be comfortable playing themselves and don’t try to hide it.

And I’m not looking for the chameleons again. Gary Oldman, Toni Collette and Cate Blanchett lead that list for me. I just saw Pushing Tin again the other night and was blown away with how stunning Cate was in that role.

No, this is for the better-than-average actor who has done many types of roles convincingly but who (for you anyway) will never escape the power of some role he or she has played only too well.

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Mark Hamill, hands down. The man has led a quiet but surprisingly successful career doing voiceover work, most notably as the Joker for the Batman Animated Series, as well as a few on-screen roles such as for SeaQuest and Wing Commander, but he will always, always be seen as Luke Skywalker.

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Paul Scofield IS Sir Thomas More from A Man For All Seasons. I’ve seen him in other roles (but too few) and have his voice on audiotapes, but he always seems to be Sir Thomas. I have a picture of him playing Salieri in the original production of Amadeus, but I can’t really imagine him in the part.
And I’ve seen other people in the role. Nobody (not even Charlton Heston) is really More for me – Scofield has it sewn up.

And William Daniels is John Adams (and Sam Adams and John Quicy Adams, too. He’s the whole damned Adams family), even though I’ve seen him in things before and after 1776. At leasy it’s better than being a talking car, which is all Ann Southern is to me.
(I don’t think of Fiennes as the guy he played in Schindler’s List, by the way.)

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Fiennes definitely isn’t it for me; I always find him convincing as each new role. That may be because I’m not very fond of Schindler’s List.

It’s a bit early to tell, but I suspect Roger Allam will be one of these for me. I just watched The Queen and kept wondering why Elizabeth II employed Lewis Prothero, the Voice of London.

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I’m fully expecting to catch a moderate degree of crap for this, but here it goes:

Christian Bale in Newsies. He did fine work prior to Newsies (Empire of the Sun) and fine work after (everything else he’s done except perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream…no one escaped unscathed from that). For some reason whenever I see him I think of him as the kid from Newsies. I know…it’s Newsies.

Also, Bill Pullman in Spaceballs. I loved that movie as a kid. Now I can’t stand it.

In fact it seems that both these actors burned themselves into my retinas in a certain role based on movies I saw when I was young. Perhaps there’s something to this. Is anybody else’s choices based on movies they saw when they were kids?

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I can’t address either of the actors/performances you mentioned, but I can respond to your question.

The Ralph Fiennes thing is an adult thing for me. But there are quite a few other actors whose affect on me as a kid would fit this thread’s theme. Most of them were bad guys (or heroes) in B Westerns who then did substantial work elsewhere later in their careers. Such people as:

Jack Elam
Strother Martin
Bob Steele
Tim Holt
Guy Madison

It took seeing Jack Palance reading Edgar Allan Poe poetry on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for me to see him as anything but Wilson in Shane, but that freed me from that prejudice.

Broderick Crawford tried to be somebody other than Willie Stark in All The King’s Men but it never worked for me, even when he was Dan Matthews on Highway Patrol TV show in the 50’s.

I could name another 20 or so villain types from 50’s and 60’s movies who never rose past those portrayals, but I suspect most Dopers wouldn’t relate to them.

Anyway, those childhood and teenager impressions do die hard.

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Funny, I can’t see Christian Bale as anything other than Patrick Bateman. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I predict that will be the case for me with Alan Rickman and Severus Snape, but I’ll have to see him in something else.

And on seeing a famous movie fight scene, I remember thinking, “Boy, if Piccolo had fought the cancer like that, he’d have made the Hall of Fame.”

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Hugh Laurie will always be House

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Pencil me in for another flashback to Piccolo. Nice one. :wink:

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He’s Bertie Wooster to me.

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For me, it’s David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

I caught some of Bleak House a few months back, and couldn’t get the stupid voice saying “why is Scully all Victorian and British?” out of my head.

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He’s Hans Gruber to me.

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I felt the same until I saw Quigley.

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Ditto.

No matter how many times Ben Kingsley plays gangland psycho killers (You Kill Me, Sexy Beast, Lucky Number Slevin)–which he does really well–he’s still Gandhi.

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John Ritter once said he could win a Nobel Prize and as he walked up to get it, they would be playing the theme from “Three’s Company.” He’ll always be remembered as Jack Tripper.

And Billy Bob Thornton will be the character from “Sling Blade”

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My wife is having a hard time taking Matthew Perry seriously in SSOTSS - he’s always Chandler to her.

Likewise the rest of the Friends cast… David Schwimmer in Band of Brothers jarred for me.

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Hugh Laurie is Prince George from Blackadder to me.

Actually, I can’t believe people watch House and don’t think, “Why is Prince George intelligent and American?”

Then again, I guess many haven’t seen Blackadder, which is odd to me.

I’ll also add that Alan Rickman is Hans Gruber, with Snape coming in a distant second in my mind.

Of course, Christopher Reeve is up there with Mark Hamil. Even though we often think of his paralysis, his role as Superman is the immediate acting role most people picture him in. He was actually a very good actor(better than Hamil IMHO).

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Patrick Stewart will always be captain Picard to me. As a teenager watching tNG, I had never heard of anyone on that show before, except for Lavar Burton.
It doesn’t matter how much Shakespeare I see the man perform, and I greatly admire his work, he’s forever burned in my mind saying, “Make it so, Number One.”

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I’ve seen Better off Dead so many times that I can’t see John Cusack as anyone else but Lane Meyer.

Wow, Lane Meyer’s in a horror movie! Lane Meyer’s in a war movie! Whaddaya know?