No one remembers Walter Koenig as Bester in Babylon 5?
Bester used to scare the crap out of me. Those mind probes that could leave you insane. :eek:
I was watching the Star Trek season 1 Blu-ray after not having watched the series for years and one of the things I really noticed was how nearly all the actors grew into their roles and the characters either became more developed (Spock, for one) or started to just blend into the background (Uhura-she started interesting then ended up just ended up ‘opening hailing frequencies’). Most noticeable was Kirk, though. From the first episode to the last, he WAS Kirk. Shatner instinctively understood his character and hit the ground running. He occasionally did ham it up and always seemed to forget to wear his black undershirt when he was going to have his uniform ripped off, but he had Kirk down to a T the first time he walked onto the set.
I do think most of the cries of typecasting comes from the sour grapes of the other actors who apparently thought they were part of an ensemble when they were really glorified extras. The first season especially, they were literally interchangeable as they were relieved by no-names quite often.
I agree that Shatner is a ham, but give him his due: he was a steadily working actor LONG before he got the role of James T. Kirk. I remember him from “Twilight Zone,” from “Judgment at Nuremberg,” and a host of TV roles.
“Star Trek” made him a star, obviously, but he was making a decent living as an actor before that, which is no small feat in show biz.
There’s not really a sufficient data sample of Star Trek actors to assess whether or not they’re likelier to get typecast than anyone else.
Two points, one of which has been already made:
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Most actors have no success at all and most that do have only fleeting success. It’s not at all unusual that Marina Sirtis or Walter Koenig would have limited success apart from their biggest roles.
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Most actors are typecast. Most professional actors will be slotted into the roles that suit their physical appearance, acting style, and personality. You’re not going to see R. Lee Ermey cast as the handosme romantic lead, or Kathy Bates as a martial arts assassin.
If you take a rundown of Star Trek and Star Wars principals it’s not at all obvious that they are likelier to have their careers derailed by their most famous role than anyone else is.
Consider the Star Wars cast:
Harrison Ford went on to star in a zillion movies and become of of the most successful actors of all time.
Mark Hamill didn’t, though he did get some other roles.
Carrie Fisher might have, but had serious substance abuse problems, and became successful in other areas.
Everyone else in the cast was either a veteran actor or inside a suit. I’m not sure what happened to Billy Dee Williams.
Star Trek:
William Shatner has been very successful
Leonard Nimoy has gotten lots of lesser work as an actor and was very successful as a director
DeForest Kelley was more or less at the end of his career
James Doohan, as mentioned, seemed content to count his money
Walter Koenig seems to have had trouble finding more work
Nichelle Nichols had limited success as an actor in the decade following the show’s cancellation, though she seems to have done a lot of work for NASA
That seems like a pretty normal winning percentage to me. I could go through the Next Generation cast but it’d be more of the same.
Especially since Koenig later showed that he’s got serious chops - frankly, I don’t even think of him as “Chekov”. He’s “Bester”, from Babylon 5 - a genuinely great, nuanced, frightening villain who’s very different from Chekov.
Yeah, aside from Picard, and maaaybe Data, the whole cast was pretty forgettable. Most of Voyager too. Janeway and the doctor were cool. DS9 was okay, but none of the characters were pinups, let’s say. ST:ENT was probably the easiest on the eyes, and the doctor was cool and charming in many ways that Neelix should have been, but wasn’t (the actor’s cool, though).
Someone up-thread mentioned being part of a popular ensemble cast doesn’t mean you’re the one driving the popularity. That’s very true. OTOH, these days if you’re part of a popular ensemble that goes on for five or more years, you’ve probably made enough money you just aren’t going to be as hungry for work afterwards.
Joe “Joey Pants” Pantoliano, who’s worked in lots of different movies (Risky Business, Bound, The Matrix, and also The Sopranos), likes to say that most actors’ careers can be summarized as follows:
Who’s Joey Pants?
Get me Joey Pants!
Get me a younger Joey Pants!
Who’s Joey Pants?
With regard to William Shatner’s acting talents, I think it would be important to remember that what we’re seeing of his work in ST:TOS was done in the 60’s, and acting itself (to my eyes, anyway) was different then. People seemed to be acting more - it seems more stylized to me than what we see now (people trying to look as natural as possible for the situations).
Typecasting can be a nuisance, no doubt about it. BUT…
Were Leonard Nimoy’s typecasting problems REALLY any worse than those of Robin “Mork” Williams?
Were William Shatner’s typecasting problems so much worse than those of Tom Hanks, who spent years wearing a dress, on “Bosom Buddies”?
Think Marina Sirtis is typecast? Sally Field was The Flying Nun, and still won two Oscars!!!
Were Nichelle Nichols’ problems any worse than those of Cher, who was best known for wearing tacky costumes and swapping lame jokes with her husband on a TV variety show?
No matter WHO you are, it’s HARD to succeed as an actor. Good parts are hard to come by, and the competition is fierce. But I’m not convinced that typecasting is really the one and only problem holding any actor back.
When watching Star Trek, Shatner seems to move between being Kirk and being Shatner. In The Voyage Home, I saw Shatner jump out when the whale lady first boarded the Bird of Prey. She tripped or something and he caught her and I guess was trying to flirt with her. It came across as Shatner trying to pick her up after filming was done for the day.
One major problem actors from the “Star Trek: TOS” era had with typecasting is most of them didn’t get residual money after the few few repeats. I think in the mid 70s that was changed with new contracts with the Scree Actors Guild but it wasn’t made retroactive.
James Doohan played a Scotty-like character on the 1996 series “Homeboys in Outer Space” but stopped when Paramount expressed its displeasure.
The reason Nimoy was so late signing on to the movies was that he was negotiating getting his back payments from all that. The thing that started it was a Heineken ad with Spock’s likeness.
Man, I’m getting a lot of traction for the book by Nimoy I picked up out of the dollar bin.
Robin Williams was an esablished stand up commedian before playing Mork, so yes.
Tell that to Peter Scolari
Sally Field was already a star when she did the Flying Nun. Remember a little show called Gidget? Added to that the fact that Sally Field is still typecast to this day as the “cute perky girl-next-door” type, she just managed to make a career out of it.
Cher was a highly successful singer before and continued to be so dispite that variety show, so yes. The Sonny and Cher Show was not what made Cher a star. She did not even get serious consideration as an actress until the '80s when she did Silkwood and Mask.
Scolari has been working steadily in a variety of roles ever since Bosom Buddies. Newhart - 142 episodes. Honey I Shrunk the Kids - 113 episodes. Not to mention over 80 guest-starring roles. Hardly an actor who is “type-cast.”
Niether was Tom Hanks. Just because you play a part does not mean you are automatically typ cast in it. The cast of Star trek were mostly type cast as, with the exception of DeForrest Kelly and maybe William Shatner, that was the only work thier fans were familiar with.
>. People seemed to be acting more - it seems more stylized to me than what we see now (people trying to look as natural as possible for the situations).
This is a really excellent point. Acting definitely was a lot more hammy and dramatic at the time. Heck, TV itself was still new and no one was sure how to make it work. A lot of early television was essentially “plays before the camera.” So you inherited everything about the theater. Over the top drama, ham, the ideal of egotistical leading man, etc.
Even the writing was very different. Watch any old show. You’ll see so much reliance on ethnic stereotypes you’ll shake your head in disapproval.
For whatever reason, Star Trek is seen as a modern show, but it really has one foot stuck in the 1950s television period and another in the 1960s. Im not much of a TV historian and not much of a Star Trek fan, but I must agree that Shatner and Nimoy were fairly talented. A lot of the conventional wisdom about their limitations really are limitations about the format and the expectations of a TV actor from that time period.
I think one of the reasons why the show remains popular and appeals to people who otherwise arent impressed by TNG or the spinoffs is that the old fashioned elements, some of which were fairly cheesy, translate into a warmth and traditionalism that the audience relates to. Which is ironic considering its a show about a progressive future. Its really just a male fantasy: commanding a big warship, girls in short skirts, little accountability, lots of sex with aliens, war/fighting, etc.
But Death of Rats, you kinda proved my point regarding Sally Field.
Both Gidget and the Flying Nun were cute, perky TV roles. NOTHING about those roles suggested she could play a redneck union organizer (“Norma Rae”) or a Depression era widow (“Places in the Heart”).
She had to overcome some MAJOR typecasting to get the roles that earned her two Oscars.
And then she proved her own typecasting by saying, “You like me! You really like me!” when she accepted her Oscar. 
I can see the typecasting of some of the Trek folk; I just don’t see the viciousness of it. Cindy Brady was viciously typecast, as were almost all the Brady kids. Of course, whoever played Cindy didn’t have much beyond her “aww, cute” stuff (if you like that sort of thing). Suzanne Somers was viciously typecast as another example. Margaret Hamilton, who loved children, could never do kid stuff after Wizard of Oz, so I guess she counts, too.
Becoming so strongly identified with one character that casting directors and audiences don’t see you as anything else is a curse of series television. Sometimes this can be because an actor can play a character so well that it becomes indelible. Henry Winkler nailed the Fonz so well, that he was never given a real chance to be anything else. Michael Richards and Jason Alexander are both quite competent actors, both capable of range, but they are still going to be Kramer and George until the day they die, simply by virtue of nailing those characters so well.
On the other side of the coin (and I think this is far more common), the actor is a mediocre talent to begin with, gets lucky with a successful series, but then doesn’t really have any extraordinary talent or ability to keep going after the series ends, and blames “typecasting” when the business loses interest in them.
None of the Brady kids, for instance, were anything special as actors. They were appealing and libeable enough, but they weren’t a bunch of little Streeps and De Niros. Same with the TOS cast, frankly, they were ok actors, but nothing special. Shatner had a big enough personality and presence to keep going. Nimoy may have been an example of an actor nailing a series character too well. The rest were – sorry to say it – dime a dozen talents. They should be grateful they hit a jackpot that’s taking care of them for life. There are thousands of other actors just as good as they were (which is to say utterly average) who never get that lucky.