The funny thing about De Kelley was that he was playing against type when he accepted the role of Dr. McCoy. He had been in westerns before, mostly playing the villain (I think Nimoy said he mostly played the type of guy who’d kick a dog). Knowing what a sweetheart De was in real life, not to mention how much McCoy valued life, it’s really, really hard for me to picture him as a bad guy. I wonder if people who watched Star Trek from the beginning had a hard time picturing him as a good guy.
George Takei is also interesting, in that he did all he could to avoid being typecast due to being Japanese. At the time he was working, pretty much the majority of the parts were for things like “oriental waiter” or “servant.” He refused to do fall into that trap, and so his first major role was on Star Trek because that was the sort of thing he was waiting for.
It’s not like acting opportunities were a dime a dozen in the '70s. We had 3 networks and one or two other TV stations in each market airing reruns. There were maybe 100 movies released in a year.
All that means is that if you wanted a job you had to either have audience appeal or actual talent and the two didn’t usually coincide.
Typecast is an excuse actors use to explain why they don’t get better roles. Most actors are happy to be typecast, some are famous and embrace it - we call them character actors.
But Sci-Fi is a traditional B-Movie genre rarely embraced by the mainstream before Star Wars and not fully embraced until the third millenium, if ever. It’s still a rare thing for a speculative work to win an oscar for best film. In the 70’s being on the fringes of the industry(sci-fi) almost made you an outcast to the mainstream film industry. Once you start working in sci-fi, expect to stay in sci-fi. Few actors manage to break out.
But sci-fi fans are the most loyal if not the most numerous. Jewel Staite will forever be welcome at the sci-fi conventions around the world for her roles in Firefly and Stargate: Atlantis.
For a true-to-life realistic view of the hell that is sci-fi acting please watch “Galaxy Quest” Okay so maybe a little unrealistic in parts.
