What's the strangest pairing you've ever seen between a movie actor's name and their char's name?

Cafe Society
1

I just re-watched one of my favorite movies, “Rising Sun”, (starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

In this movie, the name of one of the beautiful females is “Cheryl Lynn Austin” and the name of the actress who portrays her in this movie is, “Tatjana Patitz”.

I found this pairing to be very strange. (“Cheryl Lynn Austin” vs. “Tatjana Patitz”.) for two reasons. The first reason is because the name of the actress is just so bizarre as opposed to her “look” (which is extremely beautiful).

The second reason is kind of juvenile. The actress’ last name is “Patitz” which seems to me to be a kind of slang for “Pair o’ Tits” which could be quite appropriate in this case because the char she plays does display full breast nudity and her breasts are truly beautiful - exquisitely beautiful! You can take a look for yourself. They do not attempt to hide those breasts. It’s as if everyone who worked on this film is just damned proud of them and happy to display them.

I bet that she did get called some very junenile names on the school playground related to that last name. Can you imagine?

“Hey! Pair o’ Tits!” Oh dear, I bet there were days when she really didn’t appreciate that last name.

But anyway, as a result of this pairing, I decided to ask if any of you know of other bizarre pairings between the name of an actor and the name of the char they played in a movie.

2

An actor named Mark Chapman was going to play John Lennon in a TV movie until his real name became known.

3

This isn’t really what you’re asking, but in the show Burn Notice the lead character, played by Jeffrey Donovan, is Michael Westen. One episode they cast guest star Michael Weston.

It was deliberate, but also appropriate as he’s an excellent character actor.

4

I’ve often gotten confused as to the relationship of actors to roles in a move or series. In the sitcom News Radio, for instance, I had never seen Andy Dick or Stephen Root before, and, since Jimmy James, the station owner, was such a “Dick,” I assumed Jimmy was Andy Dick, and it worked well since the real Andy Dick looked like a “Stephen” to me.

This was before the days of the IMDB.

It also took a while to match the name “Ginnifer Goodwin” to the actress, when she first started appearing in small roles. Her name just sounded like it belonged to an older actress.

5

Ron Weasley playing Rupert Grint (or is it the other way around…) always struck me as a lose-lose proposition.

6

Also, January Jones / Emma Frost.

7

Oh… I was going to say there’s no name thing there, but you’d think sitting here in New England in January would clue me. :slight_smile:

Yeah, January Jones. In the words of Ford Prefect: “Looks like a babe. Named like a babe. Acts like a tree.”

8

“Acts like a tree”!

LOL!

:stuck_out_tongue:

9

Titus Welliver played Silas Adams in Deadwood, which always cracked me up because “Titus Welliver” is such a fake-ass Deadwood sounding name - much more so than Silas Adams.

10

While watching Deep Space 9 my dad commented that the actors real names sounded MORE like Star Trek characters than their character names. :slight_smile:

EDIT:

Such as Cirroc Lofton as Jake Sisko.

11

The Right stuff is interesting, not that strange really

You have Ed Harris playing John Glenn
Scott Glenn playing Allan Shepard
And Sam Shepard playing Yeager. I always want to recast it with matching names.

12

Diane Keaton played Annie Hall, which is her actual, non-stage name. It was an inside joke.

13

I always have to think for a minute to remember if Summer Glau played River Tam, or if River Tam played Summer Glau.

14

+1.

I like seeing him pop up in things like SOA (and Justified?)

15

I thought it was odd that Andrea Parker played “Miss Parker” on The Pretender. Usually, they don’t use the actor’s real last name unless they’re playing themselves.

The original Hawaii 5-0 had Zulu staring as Kono. Or was it the other way around?

For an entire cast, there was Robert Altman’s Images:

Susannah York – Cathryn
Rene Auberjonois - Hugh
Marcel Bozzuffi - Rene
Hugh Millais - Marcel
Cathryn Harrison --Susannah

Things were probably pretty confusing on set.

16

I always loved that a guy named Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock Holmes, who was also played by an actor named Basil Rathbone. It’s as if Charles Dickens was doing the casting.

17

John Cleese’s character’s name in A Fish Called Wanda was Archibald Leach, which was Cary Grant’s real name. (Cleese chose it b/c he was born 20 miles away from Cary Grant).

18

In True Grit, Barry Pepper played Ned Pepper. I guess that’s something :dubious:

19

I believe the character of Woody Boyd had already been named by the Cheers writers long before Woody Harrellson was cast.

20

Wow that beats what I was going to say.

In A Christmas Story, Ralphie has two friends, Flick and Schwartz. They guy who played Flick was named Schwartz. (the guy who played Schwartz was not named Flick, though).