Have you seen The Aviator (the biopic about Howard Hughes)? Cate Blanchett *disappeared *into Kate Hepburn for me.
I’m trying to think of early movies, before special effects were good, where maybe an actor was the only person physically capable of pulling off some feat in a movie - like Houdini, who was reportedly a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad actor in the few movies he headlined, or Johnny Weismuller (but clearly other people played Tarzan).
No one could play Indiana Jones except Harrison Ford. If they’d cast Tom Selleck, it would have been awful.
Plenty of British actors tread the boards over here.
For the same reason, The Shootist wouldn’t have been any good if anyone besides John Wayne had been cast for the lead.
Yeah, Hugh Jackman is six foot, Wolverine about five foot three’.
How about Jonathon Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace? He was a gangster who had plastic surgery to conceal his identity but the surgeon made him look like Boris Karloff. And the punchline was that Boris Karloff was playing the character in the Broadway play.
The play was a huge success and Karloff was still playing the role on stage when they made a movie version of it. So they ended up casting Raymond Massey for the part of a guy who was supposed to look exactly like Boris Karloff.
I can.
I think leads are more interchangeable than the great character actors.
(Proof: Shirley Temple as Dorothy: same move. WC Fields as Oz: “that WC Fields movie that was in color”)
Clark Gable was the only person to play Rhett Butler.
Jaye Davidson?
Book-Tyrion has no nose? How does he smell?
They did a big-screen version of BEWITCHED and Will Ferrell neatly proved that, no, if Jim Carrey is busy on another film, you wait until Jim Carrey is good and ready.
I concur. The OP’s premise is absolutely wrong. There has never been a role that only one actor in the world is capable of playing and there never will be.
Like so many Cafe Society threads, this one is simply people listing their favorite things (in this case, actors/performances).
Not so bad if he’s showered recently.
Oh, Peter Falk as Colombo.
AWFUL!
(You know you were expecting it)
Bad. Just like most everyone does in that world.
Hopkins wasn’t the first to play the part. In Manhunter Brian Cox played Hannibal Lecktor (sic). He played him in a different way, but he was as chilling and as clearly insane, and I overall prefer his interpretation.
IMO Hopkins refused to really commit to the role. Book Lector was bald and menacing. Hopkins refused to shave and was middle-aged and non-threatening. Now Hopkins in Hearts of Atlantis was a role that was remarkable and unique.
That’s not the role that made Stallone famous; literally no one else could have played Rocky Balboa, since Stallone wrote the role for himself and turned down all kinds of money to let somebody else portray an Italian-American who grew up in Philly and is still hungry for his big break while suddenly looking at the wrong side of thirty…
…and cue the double-digit number of Oscar nominations.
Bob Denver as Gilligan? Funny but so likeable.
Don Adams as Maxwell Smart? A really tough role because the character has to be both funny and tough; Adams fought and was wounded on Guadalcanal and was a DI.
Bruce Willis as David Addison. Who else had the electric charisma to overshadow Cybil Sheppard on Moonlighting?
James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano. Just born for that role both physically and as an actor.
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. What other actress would have spread em?