One show, one actor, different characters

A Martinez played a guy sentenced to the gas chamber on LA Law and them came back as the newest attorney, Danny Somethingorother, for the firm when Jimmy Smits left the show.

I saw one just the other day. Tom Arnold played Arnie for quite a few episodes of Roseanne, and his character was eventually kidnapped by aliens and only seen once after that (in the episode “Stand On Your Man”), although Tom Arnold did star in another episode (“Lose a Job, Winnebago”) where he played the host of his own show: Danny Thomas.

Roger R. Cross played four characters on X-files.

He played(from the IMDB):

- Folie a Deux (1998) TV Episode .... Agent Rice
- Pusher (1996) TV Episode .... Lieutenant Brophy
- Fresh Bones (1995) TV Episode (as Roger Cross) .... Private Kittel
- E.B.E. (1994) TV Episode (uncredited) .... Officer Green

I was surprised when I saw the very first episode of the Honeymooners. art Carney appeared not as Ralph Cramden’s neighbor Norton, but as a policeman(!)

Dragnet (at least in the 1960s incarnation I saw) kept re-using the same stable of actors for the changing cast of criminals and victims each week.

Leslie Landon made appearances on Little House on the Prairie as FIVE different characters:
Plague, 1975, as Leslie

The Election, 1977, as student Kate

The Third Miracle, 1979, as pregnant stagecoach passenger Marge.

  • A Wiser Heart*, 1981, as kitchen worker Pam

Then from 1982 to the series finale she played schoolteacher Etta Plum.

Guess it doesn’t hurt to have a dad in the business, huh? :wink:

Y’don’t say? :wink:

If it makes you feel better, you both scooped me.

Jon Lovitz played a suicidal man in an episode of Newsradio before joining the regular cast in the last season. Someone else (David Cross?) played two or three different one-off characters, too.

I’ve got one. In Homicide: Life on the street Vincent Donofrio played a guy who was pushed off a subway platform and had his bottom half spun around and cinched off. The show was 40 minutes of coming to terms that this alert, aware person was going to die once they pushed the subway cars off him.

As it happens this wouldn’t be a problem, except that Homicide had a crossover with Law & Order establishing that they shared universes. In fact Det. Munch is from Homicide as well. And now Donofrio is the lead on Criminal Intent, another of Law and Order’s spin offs.

In fact, I just found this out:

From: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV Series 1999– ) - Trivia - IMDb

If that interests you, check out the Tommy Westphall universe.

I loved that - they essentially had a repertory company for a TV show, including Debra Monk and George Plimpton. Very theatrical and very cool.

BTW, those actors who reappear on *Law & Order * (and there are a million of them) are known as “repeat offenders.” :slight_smile:

Jon Lovitz also played Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States when Bill befriends him in a mental institution. “Cigarette, prepare to be smoked.”

I recall David Cross being Theo, Jimmy’s weird nephew that does magic tricks, and a member of “Chock”, Dave’s a capella singing quartet.

I had thought Pat Morita played two characters on Happy Days, but IMDB says otherwise. It does look like he played two characters on Sanford and Son, though, Colonel Hiakowa and Ah Chew.

In Buffy, the same actor played the vampire henchman Luke, who got killed in the pilot, and the demonic Judge in the second season.

In season three, the demon who uses a homeless shelter as a source for slave labor for his home dimension later appears as the fiance of Doyle’s ex-wife on Angel. He was also an Alliance mole in the pilot for Firefly.

As someone else here noted, it doesn’t hurt to be related to the show’s star!

There is the kid who played Picard’s nephew in France, and a few years later played “young Picard” in the episode with the transporter accident. No, not that transporter accident, the other one. No, the other other one. :: sigh :: When Picard, Ro and Guinan all got turned into kids!

And Matthew Laborteaux played a young Charles Ingalls in an episode of Little House before he came on board as a full cast member as What’sHisFace. (edit: Albert)

On MASH Harry Morgan played a crazy prejudiced Col. and then of course came back and played Col. Potter.

Ya mean like in the OP? :wink:

In the new series, actress Freema Agyeman played a luckless ‘red-shirt’ Torchwood employee in 2.12: “An Army of Ghosts” (she appears long enough to get killed off & changed into a Cyber-“man”), then in season 3, she plays the regular companion character Martha Jones. (A brief aside was written in to explain the physical similarities - Martha mentions having a cousin who ‘disappeared during the Canary Wharf disaster’.)

Or its creator. Although Star Trek has generally kept actors to only one role, bringing some back decades later to play the same character, Majel Barrett has played multiple roles through the years:

1.) “Number One” (the Spock-like female second-in-command) in the first pilot

2.) Nurse Christine Chapel in TOS and the movies

3.) The Computer Voice in TOS, the movies, and the later serieses

4.) Random voices in the animated series

5.) Lwaxana Troi in Next Generation

How should we characterize Bob Newhart, who played Dick Loudon on Newhart only to be revealed to actually be Bob Hartley from The Bob Newhart Show?

Also from Dobie Gillis Jean Byron played a character named Ruth Adams in the first season, the reappeared as Dr. Burkhart in later years.

In The Gilmore Girls, the writers got around this problem by having most of the small bit parts played by Kirk. Lorelei even comments about this in one episode with the line, “Kirk, You have, like, 10,000 jobs!” when he was applying to get another. Although early in the series, the actor who played Kirk had a different role entirely… so he still fits into the category of Same Actor, multiple characters.

Sorry, I am too tired to look up all the specifics, and I haven’t seen the show since the finale, so I am not up on my Gilmore trivia today.