I never get his name spelled correctly, but Wilhelm Dafoe looks more like the president then the president.
Alphonso Bedoya is the iconic “Gold Hat” in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, there could never be a remake.
I really seem to be going against the grain in this thread, and I’m afraid I might be coming across as, or actually, threadshitting, so I’ll probably drop out after this, but:
Several posters have mentioned Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Again, I thought he was fantastic, but, again, I’m not sure he was really playing Tony Stark. I’ll admit that no actor of the current generation comes to mind as a good Tony Stark, but from a generation or two ago, I can think of several. Adrian Pasdar, as I mentioned above. Timothy Dalton and Cary Elwes (the stumbling block there would be the acccent - I’ve never heard Timothy Dalton try an American accent, and Cary Elwes’ attempts have struck me as affected and exaggerated, but if they could manage a credible British-inflected Mid-Atlantic accent, I could definitely accept that for Tony Stark). Terry O’Quinn.
The thing is, Tony Stark is a romanticized, heroic, young Howard Hughes. In real life, young Howard Hughes himself was playing a romanticized, heroic version of himself - he was basically playing Errol Flynn playing Howard Hughes. Terry O’Quinn in The Rocketeer pretty much was Tony Stark, just a slightly older Tony Stark who had retired from being a superhero to devote more time to actually running his company, and handed off the supertech to a younger pilot.
I’ve said before that, if you want a cocky womanizer who inherits his father’s corporation, and who figures he can fly rings around the military’s best pilots, and who hops in a racecar on the assumption that he can showboat there too, and who iconically twirls his hands through some kind of computer-imagery display while delivering exposition, and who can spend a movie learning to operate a powered exoskeleton bristling with futuristic weaponry — that’s all just Tom Cruise’s Greatest Hits, isn’t it?
Leo McKern as Rumpole of the Bailey.
Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holiday was a mic drop, as was Heath Ledger’s Joker
That’s probably my most favorite film performance in the last 25 years. For historical figures, there are some actors who have so dominated the role that you picture them in your head rather than the real person when thinking about History. Edward Herrmann as FDR, George C. Scott as Patton, Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, William Daniels as anybody in American History named Adams, and (a quite recent one) Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt.
To a certain extent, I think the first person we see portraying a real or fictional character becomes iconic in our minds.
Except poor Barry Nelson.
Well that explains it. Not because I think your mind would be immediately changed upon hearing him, but because Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy have played Joker and Batman in probably dozens of projects, including the very highly regarded Batman: the Animated Series.
So they loom very large over any individual live-action performances in my mind. They’re cemented as definitive for me not only because of their talent, but because of the breadth of their work.
This brings up an excellent question of how much of perception of what is the definitive version of a character comes from what version is the first you encounter? While the 1966 Batman is probably still around on TV somewhere, is it as widely known now to the post-millenium generation as those of us who grew up pre-movie?
I’m sure I saw those portrayals, and if shown would likely remember them, but they don’t readily come to my mind, other than maybe the Penguin.
And I myself am not familiar with any cartoon portrayals, though I’ve heard Hamill’s Joker is excellent.
The other way to look at the issue is to separate a personal view dependent upon what you’ve been exposed to some sort of “objective” view of all versions, though I don’t know what that would look like or how a consensus on that could be reached. I think the issue is very much tied to a person’s own opinions based on what they have experienced. Which just means this is a thread about opinions, a point I think we all assumed at the get go.
So I’m rambling on needlessly. 
Excellent example.
I said it would be weird, not impossible. It would take a dramatic shift in perception of what that character can be like. Such a shift to practically be a rewrite, a wholely different character with the same name.
Kind of like Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher. I like Tom Cruise as an actor. I think he does a lot of roles really well. I have seen the Reacher movies, and they are entertaining. However, the character from the book is largely defined by his immense size. He’s described as huge, muscled, physically intimidating. And elements of the stories seem to depend upon his size.
There’s a line in the first Reacher movie that seems off when describing Cruise, but fits very well with the book character description. At one point, the police find the body of a young woman and describe how she was killed by one strike. Then they talk to the hotel worker about why she thinks of him, she says something like, “Have you seen him?” Cruise might be able to pull off a hardened, intense expression, but he’s not going to come to mind as the guy who could kill a person with one blow.
So yes, maybe we should have a thread discussing roles that different actors have succeeded with making their own, or something.
Yes, I think that is true. Selleck’s Indiana Jones would have a different feel, but he’s a good actor, and would have likely made an enjoyable character.
Fair enough, there’s certainly a perception that Robert Downey, Jr.'s portrayal is as much Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark per se. His off-screen persona and reputation created the background for making him spring to mind as the character, as opposed to someone who would have crafted a performance without that perception of already being like that.
Sort of like Tom Cruise typecast as the cocky playboy type, because he became famous doing those roles early and does them so well. Some people seem to have a hard time accepting him in more serious roles, and still think of him that way. See post 44.
For those who have never heard Mark Hamill as Joker, by the way, an excellent place to start might be with a Google search for him reading some of Trump’s tweets using the voice.
Excellent.
Or that weird commercial with Patrick Stewart. “Oh, I AM my father!”
No doubt, there were Kirk Alyn fans who though George Reeves was completely wrong for the role.
When the casting for Iron Man was announced, everybody said, “Charming playboy with addiction problems? Downey is perfect!” And the the movies downplayed the substance abuse, and nobody cared.
When I was a kid, one of the local TV stations played old movie franchises every weekend. So, in my mind, Sherlock Holmes is Basil Rathbone.
But . . .
In my mind, Dr. Watson is Colin Blakely, from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
One anecdote that I found interesting: In the early Bond novels, Bond is said to resemble Hoagy Carmichael, and his personality is the quintessential middle-class Englishman. When Doctor No was cast, Ian Fleming thought Sean Connery was completely wrong for the role. And yet, in the later novels, Fleming added a Scottish element to Bond’s backstory, and his descriptions of Bond are a perfect match for Connery.
What is memorable to me about the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve is not so much his performance as Superman(which is great) but his performance as Clark Kent. Reeve seems the be the only actor who really tried to differentiate between the two characters.
Joan Hickson is Miss Marple for me. Julia McKenzie and Geraldine McEwen were perfectly OK, but I think Hickson found more in the character
That’s a good one. I came here to vote for Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh.
“Mr Christian! I am not a figure of fun!”
Tony Shalhoub was not their first choice to play Adrian Monk. Others came first, notably Michael Richards. It took two years for Shalhoub to be cast.
And if he had been cast, the show would have sucked. Or, at least been so different as to be unrecognizable as the Monk we know.
So maybe there is a case to be made?