Are Robt. Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Charlton Heston essentially interchangeable in many of their movies?
Not sure about those three, but I can never keep straight whether it’s Bill Pullman or Bill Paxton in a given movie without looking it up.
To me all of them are very distinctive from most actors of their time and from each other. They worked in an era of cookie cutter leading men. The ones that are remembered are the ones that rose to the top
I feel they played different roles.
Mitchum was the flawed anti-hero (or occasionally outright villain).
Heston was the upright hero who supported the system.
Douglas was the rebel hero who fought against the system.
I can’t see Douglas or Heston in Detour or The Friends of Eddie Coyle (much less The Night of the Hunter or Cape Fear).
I can’t see Mitchum or Douglas in Ben Hur or The Ten Commendments.
I can’t see Mitchum or Heston in Paths of Glory or Lonely Are the Brave.
Damon, Pitt, and DiCaprio confuse me now. Put em in the same movie and I get lost.
Kirk Douglas put a lot of intensity into his characters, be they poopyheads (The Bad and the Beautiful, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers) or heroes (Spartacus, Lonely are the Brave, etc.). Mitchum was the opposite: often amoral, always relaxed. Heston was more of the non-thinking man’s Gregory Peck.
When Edmond O’Brien had to drop out of Lawrence of Arabia, Arthur Kennedy was his standard interchange.
Hollywood also kept lesser versions on hand: Lizbeth Scott if Lauren Bacall was unavailable, Van Heflin for the Spencer Tracey slot. Need a principled bureaucrat? Call Whit Bissel or Olan Soule. For “cute old Jewish guy” there was Sam Jaffe, Ned Glass, Herbie Faye, Milton Selzer, etc.
In the IMDB trivia section for Face/Off, it lists other casting interchangeable possibilities besides Nicholas Cage/John Travolta: Schwarzenegger/Stalone; Harrison Ford/Michael Douglass; DeNiro/Pacino and Bruce Willis/Alec Baldwin.
Yes!! The first time I watched The Departed I thought DiCaprio and Damon were the same character and nothing made sense. I had to watch it again after realizing they were two different people.
I can’t keep Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving straight for some reason. I have to tell myself “If it’s not Jurassic Park, then it’s probably Hugo Weaving.”
And, for reasons perhaps best left unexamined, we find ourselves living in the age of the Chrises
E—xactly.
As they have gotten older they look more and more like each other.
Jeff Daniels is the actor usually confused with Bill Pullman.
I don’t think I’ve seen as much of his work, so he doesn’t even come to mind. I’m sticking with my own confusion, thanks. 
I’ve confused David Boreanaz and Eddie McClintock before. (David might best be known as the main character in the show Angel, and Eddie McClintock was a main character in Warehouse 13.)
It was especially confusing when they were both on the show Bones and were rivals for the affection of the show’s main protagonist and namesake. The first time I saw an episode with them both on it, I swear I am not joking but I thought it was one of those things where one actor tried to play two characters at the same time (think of The Patty Duke Show).
Here is a scene from the actual show where they are standing next to each other in the background at the top of the photo.
I thought Eddie’s character was David in a wig.
A side story… I went to the local big sci-fi/fantasy/nerd convention (Emerald City Comicon) with my best friend once when he ran into Eddie as he was looking at merchandise. Eddie was there as a guest of the show but was just out looking at merchandise. My buddy asked to take a photo with him and got one. I was so jealous afterward. Eddie was really nice and cool, especially since you typically have to pay a decent chunk of money and wait in a long line to get a photo with one of the celebrity guests at that con.
Also, I assume this thread isn’t referring to actual twin actors. I can never get Aaron and Shawn Ashmore figured out, and I always have to look up who is in what. But they are actual identical twins.
Whenever one of those two pops up onscreen, my wife turns to me and asks, “Is it him, or the other one?”. For reasons neither of us can remember, Aaron is “him” and Shawn is “the other one”.
Funny thing is that I’m pretty sure Shawn has been in more prominent roles than his brother. (Though I might have that wrong, again I mix them up all the time and struggle to remember who was in what.)
I didn’t know there were two of them. When I saw the other one, I just assumed it was him.
I think we first noticed that there were two of them when we were watching Killjoys, starring Aaron, so he’ll always be Ashmore no.1 for us.
Fair, Aaron was in that one. (That much I can remember.)
What about the four white Chrises (Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt, Pine)?