Nah, honey. Your default stance should always be, “It’s them, not me,” until proven otherwise. 
Especially as you move into Old Fart-dom.
I’ve stopped even trying to tell all those Ryans apart. In my mind it’s just that one skinny guy who’s in every movie, Ryan-Philippe Reyling.
When the show “Nashville” started, several people complained here that they couldn’t tell the male characters apart. I couldn’t either, but I never got beyond the first episode, so it didn’t matter to me. Presumably those who stuck with it can distinguish who is who by now.
I watch lots of anime. Usually in a large cast the girls all have different colored hair, so that helps a lot. My problem is the names. Since they are Japanese they are harder for me to nail down.
Yes, it’s been happening to me for the last few years. Mostly with young females, what they used to call “starlets.” These days they’re all interchangeable. But I figure, if they wanted me to tell them apart, they’d make them look different.
And it’s even worse when I’m watching CNN. Most of the newswomen started out as brunettes, and gradually became blondes. Remember when “blonde” was something special? Now I can no longer tell them apart.
And my attention span is definitely getting shorter. I start watching a movie, and have to “rewind” so much, it takes me twice as long to watch it . . . or I just give up.
It’s not you. Actors and actresses in a given year are chosen based on a set standard of beauty. This is especially bad in tv shows, but movies as well. In Time, a sci if movie where everybody stopped aging at 30, is a perfect example. “Good looking”, for any given decade, is remarkably consistent. Watch some 80’s films and compare breast sizes. There is a lot more variety than today’s universal plastic DD cup starlets. I just watched pacific rim, where every male actor had the exact same shade of dirty blonde hair.
I used to have a similar feeling when watched Suits. They are all the same and besides they all wear suits that make them pretty much alike
Thank you! I thought I was the only one. In the pilot I assumed the two leads were supposed to be long-lost brothers or something.
Once you become comfortable with the idea of all actors being Raul Julia, this problem is a lot easier to deal with.
Once you realize Raul Julia died years ago and there are still new movies being made, it becomes hard to deal with again.
A lot of “how to” books and articles suggest authors not do that just for that reason.
I advise you not to watch any show on the CW. Everybody looks exactly the same as each other, except some of them wear dresses.
Re similar-sounding names: It always bugged me that the women in Sex in the City had such similar names-- Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte. I mean *Samantha *and *Miranda *are practically interchangeable wrt sound, and they all have “a” as their main vowel sound. If I had been naming them, each name would have had a different prominent vowel sound and the names all would have had a different number of syllables.
Same problem, plus I was 3/4 asleep, and drowsing on the couch.
Try bikini beach babes type movies - get a bunch of bleached blonds with fake tits bouncing around greased up with suntan lotion in microscopic bits of fabric and I have to tell them apart by the color of their damned bikinis.
I’m in my mid-30s and I can’t keep anyone on Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire straight. It’s the suits and hats!
Male, mid-fifties — I find I’m starting to have trouble, but it seems to be the inverse of what the rest of y’all are saying. I sometimes confuse young, male actors if they have the same hair color and roughly the same length (i.e., hair length). Actresses generally aren’t a problem, though. I guess, as Icarus says, it’s a matter of what I’m paying attention to.
This caused me some trouble when I saw Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing last year. His version adds a wordless prologue where a woman wakes up next to a man, presumably after a one-night stand. Then the play begins, and it’s revealed that these are the leads, Beatrice and Benedick. Somehow, I managed to recognize Amy Acker (Beatrice) but not Alexis Denisov (Benedick) from the prologue, leaving me under the impression that Beatrice had slept with some random guy.
I had the same problem. It took me a while to figure out who the people were in that scene. Ahem, that scene isn’t in the Kenneth Branagh version.
You both couldn’t tell these four guys apart? Besides them all being white, they look almost nothing alike!
