Lots of TV roles are just people playing people. Like I’m sure it wasn’t too far of a stretch for the How I Met Your Mother crew to put on the guise of 30-something (20-something?) white folks in NYC once a week. Same goes for *Friends *and any number of sitcoms that are just kind of regular folks in interesting settings.
But some roles require the actors to “act really hard” as it were, either with an accent or a crazy personality or something else that really defines the character as separate from the actor.
One huge example I would say is Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker. Her voice and mannerisms make me exhausted to even watch, but she acted them week after week.
Michael Richards as Kramer had to do a lot of physical acting, with his body from his eyebrows to his toes. And of course that haircut!
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Jennifer Coolidge** plays quite a character on 2 Broke Girls. She’s got a Polish accent plus is squeezed in to slim-fitting, bust-enhancing wardrobe each week.
Who else do you think stands out as a TV actor that is “acting hard”?
It’s going back a ways, but I immediately think of Eric Pierpoint in Alien Nation. Playing an alien and not being able to rely on your looks or your usual human mannerisms has got to be very difficult, and I was always impressed with the way he pulled it off and made that character alien and believable at the same time.
Along the same lines, Marc Alaimo as Gul Dukat, Andrew Robinson as Garak, Peter Jarasik as Londo Mollari, Andreas Katsulas as G’Kar and René Auberjonois as Odo.
Also, I’ve been binge-watching Quantum Leap, and the sheer variety of characters that Scott Bakula had to play is exhausting.
“But some roles require the actors to “act really hard” as it were,** either with an accent **or a crazy personality or something else that really defines the character as separate from the actor.”
This includes people like Andrew Lincoln, a Brit who studied at the Royal Academy, convincingly playing Southerner Rick Grimes. That’s definitely a rather sharp divide between character and actor!
I think the winner would have to be Tatiana Maslany, star of Orphan Black, who plays so many completely different characters so utterly convincingly that it beggars belief. The fact that she has not won an Emmy is criminal.
David Tennant as the 10th Doctor. Not only did he do a marvelous job acting like a Baker-esque, fast paced nutjob, but he had to put on an English accent on top of it all (he’s Scottish).
He was quite consistent, too - if you watch the Seinfeld blooper videos on Youtube, you’ll notice that Richards is almost never the one who screws up.
Toni Collette portrayed a woman with multiple personality disorder on the Showtime series United States of Tara. I think she did four or five distinct characters, one of whom was male. (And the characters are all American, while she is Australian.) Claire Danes portrays a woman with bipolar disorder on Homeland.
I’ve never seen a three camera show film, but for one camera shows the actor is in character for a few minutes at most. The trick is not keeping up a character for a long time, but being able to switch into that character the moment the cameras start rolling.
And while I agree that doing multiple personalities or accents is tougher than one, no actor plays him or herself. Projecting for a camera is not that easy. If it was, anyone could do it, and they can’t.
Jean Stapledon merits the praise, but Carroll O’Connor as Archie was just as difficult. Maybe he was so believable as a blowhard people don’t consider it great acting, but it is.
Has Hugh Laurie on House been mentioned? American accent instead of his natural Brit, and apparently the limp he used as the character was actually pretty hard on him physically. (Daily Mail link - sorry!)
Andrew Lincoln was my first though as well. If you’ve never heard him in an interview, go find on youtube. Not only is he British, but he’s also really soft spoken (and clean cut in the off season).
Also, on Fear The Walking Dead, the lead character is from New Zealand. He said he has a voice coach monitoring his every syllable. He also mentioned that one of the more challenging aspects of speaking this way (no accent?) is not slipping into his co-star’s Alabama accent. I don’t know how long he’s been in the States, but I imagine it would probably be easy to pick up some of her accent without even knowing it.
When first started watching the show I checked IMDB (more than once) to see if they were all her or not. Even several seasons in, I’m still amazed. The mannerisms, they way they talk, every single aspect of each sister is so totally different. Then, on top of the normal ones, you have Helana (hello sestra) and Rachel which are even more different. The only one that bugged me was (I don’t want to spoil it) when it seemed like they got bored and tried another clone to see how Tatiana would do with it. It just seemed off.
And, yes, I’m amazed it hasn’t won any major awards either.
I’m gonna suggest Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele. As Remington Steele, Brosnan was witty, humorous, animated and likable. But in every TV interview I’ve seen with him, he’s dour and humorless, with no particular energy, and really kind of a downer. I saw him on Larry King years ago when a woman called in, very, very exited to be talking to him and gushing about how much she loved Remington Steele and that she’d recorded every single episode. His response was to look at King with an exasperated expression and utter “Oh, God…”, as if to say what an empty life this woman must have to be so fixated on a silly TV show.
So I’m gonna say he did quite a good job of acting to come off so convincingly as someone so different from the way he is in real life.