Roles/characters that couldn't be played by any other actor/actress

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by the Favorite Foreign Actors? thread, what are ** those** roles/characters played by actors/actresses that couldn’t be played (especially in remakes) by anyone else.
Joey Wong Jyo Yin/Wang Tsu Hsien - As I mentioned in the other thread, her part (a different character in eachi) in the A Chinese Ghost is hers alone.

Chow Yun Fat - *The Killer, Hard Boiled and the A Better Tomorrow *trilogy. What can I say that already hasn’t been said!

**Moon So Ri ** - Oasis - An absolutely stunning performance in which she plays a woman with cerebral palsy. She contorted her body so much during the filming she was hospitalized for months after completion.

Angel Yao An Chi - A little known Taiwanese actress whose short appearance at the end of Blowfish is the one of the most powerful screen performances I’ve ever seen. Her initial silence and three spoken lines explains and brings to a close everything that occurred before.

Jeon Ji Hyun - *My Sassy Girl[, Windstruck/I] - Remade in English, Japanese and Chinese, no one compares to the original.

**Toshiro Mifune ** - Seven Samurai - His transformation from a lowly farmer to a respected equal by the samurai is one of the most amazing roles in cinematic history.

To give you more mainstream actors/movies.

**Yul Brynner **- Westworld - There can be no better Gunslinger than him.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - Terminator, Terminator 2 - He’s become a self parody of his character after the squeal, but if someone would to build a killer android, it would HAVE to look like Arrrnold.

Robert DeNiro - Taxi Driver - Al Pacino and Christopher Walken are arguably his equal when it comes to crazy eyes, but you can that Travis Bickle’s crazy goes past his eyes deep into his psyche.

2

Inspired by the Favorite Foreign Actors? thread, what are ** those** roles/characters played by actors/actresses that couldn’t be played (especially in remakes) by anyone else.

Joey Wong Jyo Yin/Wang Tsu Hsien - As I mentioned in the other thread, her part (a different character in eachi) in the A Chinese Ghost is hers alone.

Chow Yun Fat - *The Killer, Hard Boiled and the A Better Tomorrow *trilogy. What can I say that already hasn’t been said!

**Moon So Ri ** - Oasis - An absolutely stunning performance in which she plays a woman with cerebral palsy. She contorted her body so much during the filming she was hospitalized for months after completion.

Angel Yao An Chi - A little known Taiwanese actress whose short appearance at the end of Blowfish is the one of the most powerful screen performances I’ve ever seen. Her initial silence and three spoken lines explains and brings to a close everything that occurred before.

Jeon Ji Hyun- My Sassy Girl[, Windstruck - Remade in English, Japanese and Chinese, no one compares to the original.

**Toshiro Mifune ** - Seven Samurai - His transformation from a lowly farmer to a respected equal by the samurai is one of the most amazing roles in cinematic history.

To give you more mainstream actors/movies.

**Yul Brynner **- Westworld - There can be no better Gunslinger than him.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - Terminator, Terminator 2 - He’s become a self parody of his character after the squeal, but if someone would to build a killer android, it would HAVE to look like Arrrnold.

Robert DeNiro - Taxi Driver - Al Pacino and Christopher Walken are arguably his equal when it comes to crazy eyes, but you can that Travis Bickle’s crazy goes past his eyes deep into his psyche.

Catherine Denueve - Repulsion - Speaking of crazy eyes going deep. In her first English speaking role, she perfectly epitomizes the beautiful lost lamb in a foreign country threatened by real and imagined attackers.

3

Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. The perfect man for the role.

4

I was going to post the same. From the moment they announced that they had cast RDJ as Tony Stark, I said to myself, “that’s perfect casting.” It only took that first film for him to own the role; the fact that he’s since played Stark in something like a dozen more films only serves to cement that fact.

Similarly, I that Tom Hiddleston owns the role of Loki, and it’d be pretty much impossible to cast anyone else.

5

Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

6

Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Indiana Jones. As demonstrated by the Solo movie or considering an alternate universe where Tom Selleck was Indiana Jones (as he almost was in our universe), the character just doesn’t work with anyone else playing the role. Yes, IMHO they are basically the same character.

7

Don Knotts - “The Andy Griffith Show”
Tom Selleck - “Magnum PI” (As is being displayed currently)
Henry Winkler - “Happy Days”
Danny DeVito - “Taxi”
Howard Hessman - “WKRP in Cincinnati”

8

Marlon Brando - Don Vito Corleone (elder)
Robin Williams - Mork from Ork
Humphrey Bogart - Rick Blaine
Anthony Hopkins - Hannibal Lector

9

Inspector Clouseau — Peter Sellers
Mr Spock — Leonard Nimoy
Captain Kirk — William Shatner
Dr McCoy — DeForest Kelley
Jim Rockford — James Garner
Sheldon Cooper — Jim Parsons
Sam Malone — Ted Dansen
Diane Chambers — Shelley Long
Ernie “Coach” Pantusso — Nicholas Colasanto
Frasier Crane — Kelsey Grammar
Niles Crane — David Hyde Pierce
Steve McGarrett — Jack Lord, regardless of the current iteration.
Danny Williams — James MacArthur, ditto.
Chin Ho — Kam Fong, by all means.
Kono — Zulu. No more need be said!

I know there’s been more than one version of ***I, Claudius ***, but I can’t imagine it without Derek Jacobi (Claudius), George Baker (Tiberius), Brian Blessed (Augustus), Sian Phillips (Livia), and John Hurt (Caligula).

10

Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker

Larry Hagman as JR Ewing

11

Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan

Steve Carell as Michael Scott

12

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher.

13

Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty. (Okay, Robin Williams could perhaps have done it too.)

14

Keiko as Willy in Free Willy.

15

Duplicate thread. See here.

16

H’m. I was about to say Harrison Ford (again) as Indiana Jones…but then I got to thinking.
While he is the very picture of Indy in my mind, who’s to say another actor might have made something as good with the role…but in a different way?
For example, Tom Selleck, IIRC, was one of the finalists in the role. Would he have portrayed Indy in the same way? I think not. But would his version of Indy have been just as iconic as Ford’s version. I think it possible, though we’ll never know for sure.
To take an actual example, both Daniel Craig and Sean Connery have played James Bond. Both, to me, are very good at it - and they are very different portrayals of the character. Same with Eccleston and Tennant as the Doctor.

In other words, while I have trouble picturing anyone but X as Y, a remake using Z might very well bring something interesting and new to the picture.

Still, Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford. :wink:

17

A few years ago, we would have agreed that Heath Ledger owned the character of the Joker, and the role should have been retired forever with his passing. Turns out damn near anybody can play the Joker pretty well.

Before we retire Tony Stark forever, let’s give Jeffrey Dean Morgan a shot at the character, or even Keanu Reaves. You’d be surprised how many Hollywood actors can credibly play a syphilitic douchebag with addiction issues.

18

Tom Cruise as Maverick. And if you don’t know he is doing that role again this summer.

19

Leo McKern is Horace Rumpole – John Mortimer eventually wrote the series Rumpole of the Bailey with McKern in mind, because he so clearly inhabited the role. McKern not only played the role on television for 14 years, he continued to read and perform the character for audiobooks (released by three different companies!) long after the TV series finished. There have been audiobooks of the Rumpole series performed by other actors (including the noted Michael Hordern), but they are nowhere near as good as the McKern versions.

I’ll agree about Robert Downey, Jr. being the best Tony Stark/Iron Man. That was never my favorite Marvel superhero when I was reading his comics, but Downey really won me over playing the character in the MCU.

As for Yul Brynner as The Gunslinger in Westworld, he appeared to be a natural as the cool, deadly, confident western gunslinger in that movie because he’d already played that character before – in *The Magnificent Seven, The Return of the Magnificent Seven, * and Catlow. That the role “belonged” to Brynner is demonstrated by the fact that the ones who took over the role of Chris Adams in the Maghnificent Seven sequels – George Kennedy in The Magnificent Seven Ride and Lee Van Cleef in The Magnificent Seven Ride – couldn’t hold a candle to Brynner. (It’s interesting that the cast of The Magnificent Seven almost appear to have been cast because of their physical resemblance to the cast of The Seven Samurai. James Coburn, with his long, lean appearance and long face, looks eerily like Seiji Miyaguchi, who played the corresponding character in Seven Samurai. Takashi Shimura, who played the leader of the SAmurai, had his head shaved for most of the film (for reasons given in the film), and he was played by possibly the most famous shaven-headed actor in American film at the time.)

20

John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich