Some casting is impeccable. Certain actors can take a character and not only be strongly identified with it, but make the character itself all the more three dimensional and memorable. Marlon Brando took liberties with the Godfather and made him on the defining main characters of the 20th century cinema.
Some actors, on the other hand, are oddly chosen. They might be doing a bad job at their given task, or they might be doing a good job but just weren’t the right kind of person for the job to begin with.
I’m watching Roots right now. The story follows an afro-american family in the time span of a hundred years, with generation shifts and all that comes with it. It would be tolerable, but the end result is sometimes confusing. In the third episode, the character Kizzy has a son of 18, played by actor Ben Vereen, who was 31 at the time (and looks the age!). In fact, Ben was only three years younger than Leslie Uggams who played his mother!
How did Hugh Laurie wind up on House? I mean, what television producer was watching the utterly buffoonish Prince George on the third season of Blackadder and said “that’s our bitter, ascerbic, pill-popping, genius, American Doctor!”
I’m not complaing; he’s good. But whoever knew he’d be good in that role saw something in his past work that I sure didn’t.
Well, heck, Sean Connery isn’t that much older than Harrison Ford (twelve years) , yet he played his dad in the third Indiana Jones flick.
And Sally Field played Tom Hanks’ mom in Forrest Gump, although they played characters about the same age in Punchline (She’s ten years older).
And Jessie Royce Landis was only eight years old than Cary Grant in North by Northwest where she played his mother.
It happens a lot in the movies. Don’t get me started on the 20-something “teenagers” in a lot of films and TV shows.
Peruse the cast list for The Conqueror. As an added bonus, it’s believed that nuclear dust from the filming location eventually killed them all.
As far as age choices, I always liked Angela Landsbury playing Laurence Harvey’s mother in The Manchurian Candidate when she was only three years older than him. Not that she didn’t do a superb job, mind you.
It does happen a lot. Some actors have the charisma and skills to get away with it, like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless or Seth Green in, oh, anything he’s ever been in. But the character from Roots was just way over the top. He looked old, damn it.
It also happens a lot because with an actor under 18, there are child labor laws, they have to get schooled, etc…It’s just generally a lot easier for the legal team to use someone 18 or over. And as you said, since there are several actrs already known to be “good” at a teenage roll, they continue to get cast until they are laughably not a teenager.
I dunno – the casting of the Marx Brothers in **The Story of Mankind[/B[ has to be all-out weirder than that. Groucho Marx plays Peter Minuit, cheating the Indians out of Manhattan Island. Harpo Marx plays Sir Isaac Newton, playing a harp solo after getting hit on the head by that apple. OK, you say, but it’s a comedy. But then why does Chico Marx get an absolutely straight role as a monk talking with Columbus in perfectly straight scene? The movie isn’t really a comedy, except for those two scenes or so. Some of the other scenes are also pretty bizarre. I’d dearly love to show this at one of my Bad Film Festivals, but I’ve never seen it on DVD or VHS.
George Washington played by William Shatner (Canadian-born Jewish).
John Adams played by Lorne Greend (Canadian-born and Jewish)
Alexander Hamilton played by Ross Martin (Polish-born and Jewish)
I don’t think the producer ever saw Laurie’s work. From all the reports, he didn’t even realize that Laurie was British. But I started to watch House because my image of Laurie was so at odds with what the character was supposed to be like.
Though no one realizes it now, Telly Savalas as Kojak was a very offbeat casting for him. He always had played villains and psychos.
It was also odd to see genial Fred McMurray as the villain in The Apartment, though his general niceness made the role that more effective.
Even weirder in that, in the original TV movie, “Kojak” is obviously of Slavic extraction. they made the character Greek later, because Savalas was Greek, but “Kojak” isn’t at all a Greek name.
Worst all-time IMO: Roddy McDowall as Tuesday Weld’s high school student love interest in Lord Love a Duck. He looks 30, she looks like a hot 18 year old.
Crandolph beat me to Lord Love a Duck, actually Rod was **38 ** at the time. God, I love that movie- Tuesday Weld was at her hottest. Plant skills for life! I don’t do bad things with boys!
