Henry Fonda – Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts in Mister Roberts, the hold out juror in 12 Angry Men, General Theodore Roosevelt jr. in The Longest Day, The President in Fail-Safe and (much later, of course) Norman “Old Poop” Thayer in On Golden Pond
…
And of course … Frank, the psychotic killer in Once Upon a Time in the West
Trivia via IMDB: Henry Fonda originally turned down a role in the picture. Director Sergio Leone flew to the United States and met with Fonda, who asked why he was wanted for the movie. Sergio replied, “Picture this: the camera shows a gunman from the waist down pulling his gun and shooting a running child. The camera pans up to the gunman’s face and… it’s Henry Fonda.”
Well, technically, Feidler wasn’t the killer in that episode; just some schmo possessed by a malevolent alien entity. Of course, it raises the question of what was going on in his character’s mind when the entity moved on to someone else, i.e. Scotty. Was he dead when the entity was a-wandering?
To tie in with the OP’s Winnie the Pooh motif, I’ll point out that the current voice of Eeyore, Peter Cullen, worked in a previous life as Optimus Prime.
How about Farrah Fawcett(-Majors) going from playing “the blonde one” on “Charlie’s Angels”, to playing a battered wife in “the Burning Bed.”
I always imagined Kate Jackson must boil over in a rage at the mere mention of Farrah’s name:
Before “Angels” - Kate was an actress on the rise & (at least as she saw it) considered a ‘serious’ actress who was too good to play such mindless fluff. Farrah was the pin-up girl with boobs, feathered hair & dazzling teeth - but not much else. Farrah took the job on “Angels” to give herself something to do while not cooking for hubby Lee.
After “Angels” - Kate is relegated to a career on fluffy tv shows like “Scarecrow & Mrs. King” while Farrah becomes a surprise Broadway sensation, and stars in critically acclaimed tv movies.
Speaking of Neil “Doogie” Patrick Harris, he also played the gay smack-addicted emcee onstage in Cabaret (here’s a pic of Doogie gone bad) and most recently as Lee Harvey Oswald in Assassins.
She also did a bang-up job playing Aileen Wuornos in a made-for-TV movie. I’d only seen her in Designing Women, so the change from Charlene to Aileen was an impressive one.
Very true, Katisha. My admiration for Sir Ian McKellen’s body of work knows no bounds.
All I was saying is that if, for instance, an actor was known just for Adolf Hitler and Zebedee, he’d be getting dangerously close to being typecast.
I mean, “in times of chaos he restores order”sounds all very well in theory, but I’d hate to be someone breaking curfew more than a few minutes after he utters his creepy “Time for bed”.
What about Gregory Peck?
From Atticus Finch to Dr. Joseph Mengele in Boys from Brazil. (Which, by the way, if you haven’t seen, don’t bother. Awful, AWFUL movie.)
