Or Danny Thomas as Danny Williams.
Lyle Talbot had a bit part in Green Acres where he played Senator Lyle Talbot.
Watch the last episode again and then tell us whether he ever played a character named Bob in Newhart.
Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum in Magnum P.I.
Amy Brenneman as Amy Gray in Judging Amy
James Garner as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files
James Garner (again) as Jim Egan in 8 Simple Rules
John Ritter as Jack Tripper in Three’s Company
Paul Reiser as Paul Buchman in Mad about You
Jerry Paris as Jerry Helper in The Dick Van Dyke Show
Fran Drescher as Fran Fine in The Nanny
Ellen DeGeneres as Ellen Morgan in Ellen
Close but not exact:
Katey Sagal as Cate Hennessey in 8 Simple Rules
Georgia Engel as Georgette Franklin Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show
30 Rock had a bunch of these: Elizabeth Stamatina “Tina” Fey as Liz Lemon, Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan, John Lutz as Lutz, Grizz Chapman as Grizz, John Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy…
(okay, not that last one.)
And for a list… (I waited until after people stopped posting for a few days)
Season 2 of Good Omens: Maggie and Nina are played by Maggie and Nina.
Our discussion of Play it Again, Sam in another thread made me realize that Woody Allen played Allan Felix in that. And please note that it’s not a first name/last name thing, because Woody’s birth name is Allan Stewart Konigsberg (he changed it to Heywood Allen legally when he was 17). I don’t kniow why he changed the “a” to an “e”.
Steve Buscemi’s character in Desperado is Buscemi.
Jackie Chan played various characters named “Jackie” in several movies, although some of those (I think) only had him as “Jackie” in the subtitles.
Bumping an old thread because I just noticed that in the recent Saturday Night movie, Lamorne Morris was cast to play Garrett Morris. (And if we’re counting first names, Paul Rust was cast to play Paul Shaffer.)
Yesterday I posted something about the Sarah Silverman show. I think all of the main cast had the same first name as their characters.
In It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia there’s Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly, and if stage names count there’s also Rob Mac as Mac.
During the 80s standup boom they tried to give every comic with a decent 30 minutes a sitcom. More often than not the character would keep all or some of their real name to tie into their standup routine. We remember the times it worked like with Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Allen. A bunch of times it didn’t work. Tom Rhodes played Tom Rhodes in Mr Rhodes. Paul Rodriguez played Paul Rivera in AKA Pablo. I’m sure there are a bunch of failures that I forgot.
In the TV show The Pretender, Andrea Parker played Miss Parker.
Not an exact match but surprisingly close. In the upcoming movie Ella McCay, the title character is played by Emma Mackey.