Surely you mean:
POW!!!, WHAM!!!, THUNK!!!?
Yes, that’ll do. And don’t call me Shirley! :dubious:
clears throat
As The World Turns, not Edge of Night.
Mae Questel first performed Betty Boop in 1931, and voiced her again in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. That’s a good 47-year span.
Walter Matthau played Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple on Broadway starting in 1965. He went on to do the movie and the 1998 sequel The Odd Couple II. So there’s 33 years.
You need to get some coffee into you, stat; that’s 57 years–you shorted yourself 10.
Peter Cullen first voiced Optimus Prime in the 1984 animated series and continued when the movie franchise began in 2007. Transformers 5 comes out in 2017, so that will make 33 years.
He’s 74 years old, and I imagine he’ll keep doing the voice as long as he’s healthy. Any other voice for Prime would be unacceptable!
Interesting responses all. I might add - I’ve been realizing that I didn’t make a point clear, even to myself at the time of my OP - I was specifically thinking of an actor who portrayed a character that aged in real time over the years. Hal Holbrook’s Twain, for example, was always the same age, regardless of how old Holbrook was at the time.
Does that make it Don Hastings FTW?
Leonard Nimoy as Spock would qualify. In his appearance in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, he appeared noticably older than in the original series and in the movies (despite dying and coming back to life) and in J. J. Abrams’ 2009 “Star Trek” he appeared absolutely ancient.
I realize we’re talking about a character who is half alien and whose species lives twice as long as humans, but Spock did appear to age along with the actor who played him.
How about Don Pardo - the announcer on SNL from 1975 until his death in 2014 for a run of 39 years? But “the announcer” isn’t really a character even if he was an important part of the show.
Although not the winner, my favorite honorable mention in this category is Susan Lucci as Erica Kane on All My Children. She was on for the entire 41 year run except that she debuted on the 11th day of the show. She also is in contention for longest married celebrity as she has been with her husband since 1969, a little amusing considering her character is well known for having been married ten times to 8 different men.
And for being in film, he played the Lone Ranger on the famous Stan Freberg Jeno’s Pizza Roll commercial which was around 1966 I think - the Wiki entry for Freberg doesn’t have the date. And we need to add Jay Silverheels in here too.
Here’s a related question: What actor has played the same character in the greatest number of feature films? (Regardless of how many years this was stretched out from start to finish.)
This excludes serials, TV shows and porn. Only movies that played in a theatrical release.
I’d figure Desmond Llewellyn as ‘Q’ is still pretty impressive.
Charlie Chan
- Warner Oland 16 movies
- Sidney Toler 22 movies
The 3 Stooges shows we saw on TV started out as things played in theaters - do they count? Does a Flash Gordon serial count as one movie or 12?
I argued against it in post #32. Basically, they were different characters in every movie.
Also, **Horatio Hellpop **specified feature films. The Stooges played mostly in shorts.
Well, these both beat Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes!
I really doubt it–they did NOT have the legs for it. 
Atsumi Kiyoshi (or maybe it’s Kiyoshi Atsumi) played the character Tora-san 48 times:
Also, here’s a list of some actors who’ve played the same role a lot: