Can somebody explain typecasting to me?

[Deja Q]

Yes, there's an actor. He's in a tv show. Now he's in another. Different role.

I don't see one actor being "the character", so why do others do?

[johnnie]

1. Actors complain of typecasting

When they suck and can't get hired anywhere else. Maybe?

[billyskank]

2. On a British panel comedy program

I was an Iranian comic moaning about how he always gets hired by Hollywood studios to play the part of an "Arab scumbag," as he puts it. That guy is suffering from typecasting.

[tjdee]

3. Hired for the same "type" of work. Meg Ryan only does cute,

Will Ferrell only does funny, black women only got maid parts, that sort of thing.

They're thought to only be bankable as one *type* of character. It happens *much* less with men.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Ahh, the good ol' evil men card rears again...

You got anything to back that up with?

[tjdee]

11. Yes.

Robin Williams used to play Mork. He got an Oscar for playing a psychiatrist.

Jim Carrey used to play Fire Marshall Bill. Now he's playing serious (albeit quirky) films.

Tom Hanks used to crossdress on tv. Years later he went to playing an AIDS victim.

I think you'd be hardpressed to find a comedienne who gets serious roles, except for Whoopi Goldberg. It's not like Roseanne is playing a psychologist. I'm sure there's one or two others....can't think of any off the top of my head.

But I think MOST actors in general (men and women) are typecast. I was going to say Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman will never be a villain....but it made my point, LOL, because both have.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. Oh wow, you used three sporadic examples!

So three male comedians break out of their typecasts and that's enough for a stereotype? Please. Considering overwhelming disparity of male to female famous comedians, the three-to-one ratio you came up with isn't too bad. That's, of course, assuming that's the only type of actor that's type cast. I could give you about 50 men who've never had a role outside of the italian mafia movie genre.

But then you say most actors in general are typecast... so what in the hell was your original point to begin with? What an asinine statement.

[tjdee]

22. I didn't realize my point was so obtuse.

Makes perfect sense to me.
:shrug:

[antigone382]

26. If there's an enormous disparity of male to female famous comedians...

...it seems to me that that would point to sexism on some level, even if it may not be intentional. Perhaps I'm missing some sarcasm on your part. If so, please excuse my ignorance of it.

Nobody said that men were evil, just that the theatre and film industry are a lot rougher on women. The simple reason for this is that there just isn't the same variety of roles for women as there is for men. I know from years of working in theatre, that a majority of the plays and musicals performed feature more rounded out roles for the principle male characters and more conventional roles for the principle females.

Note I say a majority of plays, not all of them; there are plenty of examples of plays that have clever, challenging female roles. But for each play or musical, or for that matter each screenplay that presents a genuinely well-rounded female role, there are three or four in which the only prominent female role is one of a handful of love interest varieties. As a result, women deal more with the problem of typecasting, because we are competing for fewer non-typecast roles. That's just the way it is, and that's just the way it has been for thousands of years.

I don't have facts and figures for you. All I have are my own observations and experiences in dealing with this reality. As with all opinions (including yours), mine is subjective, and you may accept it or reject it as you wish.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

27. I never said there wasn't any sexism.

And lot of the disparity is still due to historical inequalities. That said, the problem of typecasting seems to touch just about every actor regardless of gender.

As for "non-typecast roles"... it's not the roles themselves that are typecast. It's the people. Someone gets pigeonholed as a quirky, serious, stupid, gay, intellectual/dorky, you name the personality type, there's a typecast for it. Perhaps you're not understanding the word itself.

[Deja Q]

7. Agreed. Look at Tom Cruise.

Couldn't act good enough to save his life and he gets how many tens of millions per intellectualy bankrupt pic he's in?

[Dogmudgeon]

12. What is it with the Tom Cruise hating around here?

I just don't get it -- the gay thing, the Scientology thing, or his alleged lack of acting skills.

I don't care whether he's gay or not. As long as he keeps his religion out of my face, he can believe anything he wants. And he does a pretty good job of acting, even if his chops are a little below those of the late Sir Richard Burton.

It's like the crusade against Jimmy Fallon a year or two ago -- I'm left shaking my head. The idea that Fred Dalton Thompson left a cushy GOP legislative job and walzed right into Law And Order to play the part of a conservative Southern redneck D.A. in NYC offends my sensibilities more -- both for the skids greased in his honor, and the horrendous stereotype.

--p!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

4. That's YOU.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean other people don't. At very least, that's the perception casting agents have of certain people, and quite frankly, their opinions are the last word on that.

[Lannes]

6. Could be the way he is written

Might be a different role but the writers are giving his character the same personality traits as the last character he portrayed.

[barb162]

8. I suspect this happens a lot and it probably happened a lot more a long

time ago. I remember reading about certain stars in the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc., some people were always given glamour roles, others got the westerns, others got the crime dramas, etc. If the movie made money, the people in it were just told to keep doing those types of movies.

[Lisa]

24. there was a story that Edward G. Robinson's career was almost wrecked

Some studio publicity person convinced him to be in a humorous magazine article. He usually played tough guys, and apparently his fans freaked when they saw him posing in a bath full of bubbles! Rumors started going around that he was gay, and his agent decided that it would be better to stick with a limited range of roles (and maintain an off-screen persona to match) than end up having no work at all. So I guess that would be an extreme version of typecasting.


I guess there are probably a bunch of reasons today why actors can get stuck in the same kinds of roles. The actors themselves may not have the talent or inclination to do anything different -- the publicity people, agents, and casting directors might feel more comfortable sticking with what worked last time (just like certain types of movies will be all the rage one year, and struggle to find financing the next) -- and the audience can have certain opinions. If a focus group is telling the studio that they simply can't picture a certain actor in a particular role (e.g. Harrison Ford as a villain) -- even if it's because they have poor imaginations, or are so fannish that they get huffy when their idol portrays a more human character, the studio execs might listen to them. Even the critics can fall into this trap -- more than one of them claimed that they couldn't help imagining Orlando Bloom as Legolas even when they were supposed to be reviewing an entirely different film.

Since there are a lot of Star Wars threads today -- Mark Hamill is another example. He was quite versatile and did a lot of stage work before Star Wars (drama, musicals, comedy, etc.) -- ironically one of the few times when he got to show this off was on "The Muppet Show". Everybody else seemed to want him to keep doing sci-fi and adventure.

p.s. as a couple of earlier posters pointed out, not everyone thinks that "range" is cool or even admirable, even though you are trying to be fair to the actors by assuming they could play any number of roles. And, as you said, that they aren't really the characters they are portraying. (I'm going to keep re-reading your post because a friend set me up for a date with a guy in the local theatre group whom I last saw onstage as the baddie, enthusiastically stabbing people left and right.)

Authors (and research scientists) face a similar thing -- if you cover a bunch of different fields, you get accused of being shallow and not having commitment to a definite research program.

[barb162]

33. Several movie people come to mind about typecasting

Four Oscar winners: Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" and George Chakiris and Rita Moreno in "West Side Story" said they couldn't find jobs after those roles except for the same roles they just did. They seemed to fade away even though the films made great money. Kathy Bates, best actress Oscar for "Misery" got REALLY typecast.

The list goes on and on, but then again there are others who seem to be able to not get typecast for whatever reasons.

[leftofthedial]

9. it's like in the DU class play,

when we make HypnoToad the axe murderer.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Hollywood producers are like dogs

They spend half their lives sniffing each others' butts, in vain attempts to "duplicate" previous successes. (Dogs, at least, are honest about butt-sniffing, since it's about identification with them.)

They're a remarkably un-creative breed, so they'll peg an actor a certain way. It has happened to nearly every actor around. Make a list of any ten actors (male and female) and see if you can't figure out their "type" in about ten seconds. Then, count how many roles they have taken that are against type.

The Outer Limits (the modern series) is worth watching because the producers often cast an actor against type. I saw a time-travel mystery episode recently where comedian Kevin Nealon was cast as a serious, brainy scientist. They've also cast Molly Ringwald as the bitter sister of a murder victim, Bruce Boxleitner as a craven and megalomaniacal politician, and Jack Klugman as a computer scientist.

--p!

[stinkeefresh]

13. I have the answer

But it will take a few paragraphs.

Meryl Streep, Ben Kingsley are never the same from movie to movie- these are Actors.

Tom Cruise is always the same in every movie (if he plays outside his type, the film either does poorly or is a rare anomoly.) - he is a Movie Star.

Actors are not Movie Stars and Movie Stars are not Actors. They are both valuable to film, however.

A Movie Star becomes a hit, and thus a box office draw, and thus a Hollywood Power Player, if and ONLY if the character they play resonates with society. If it does, then the Movie Star begins to fill the same societal place that Mercury or Hera filled in ancient Greece, or Pantalone and Columbina filled in reaissance Italian theater. Namely- they are characters that we see and say (internally) "yes- that is a person I know. I want to see more stories that explore that character's response to various situations."

You could look at that as cheap, or silly, but I don't.

Take Katherine Hepburn. Have you ever seen her play a dumb character? Would you want to? I have- an early film called Alice Adams that would make you want to throw rocks at the screen. She was a Movie Star whose persona perfectly resonated with the society of her time. She was a smart, able woman, and made no bones about it in any situation- and people couldn't get enough. Would the same audience want to see Lauren Bacall play the same types of characters? Hell no! They wanted Bacall to play the back-room girl. Still smart, still able, but down on her luck and passionate.

Tom Cruise = The Naive Man who has blocks preventing him from seeing the dark truth.

Nicole Kidman = The Detached Woman who goes successfully through life without quite connecting to the things around her.

Tom Hanks = Jimmy Stewart = The All-American Good Guy. Good at heart, humble and just.

Demi Moore = The Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. She used to get a lot more mileage out of this, but it doesn't resonate as well any more. See Nicole.

Michael Douglas = used to be The Powerful Asshole. He got a ton of mileage out of this for decades (and being 2nd gen, he GETS how this works). Then he did the very difficult trick of changing his persona. 2 films, Falling Down and The Game successfully changed his Movie Star character to the Man who had Learned a Thing or Two. Only after that transition could he have played a character like the one in Wonder Boys.

This is how it works, and it's actually pretty cool. I sure like Tom Cruise more than I used to.

[ContraBass Black]

21. Which is Denzel Washington?

[CBHagman]

23. Denzel Washington is an actor.

Yes, Washington is handsome and also a movie star, but we know he has range, talent, and depth. Fortunately casting today is slightly more imaginative than it used to be (though still not by much), so he ought to have interesting projects for as long as he wants to act.

Most of the actors I really respect come from the theater and/or go back there periodically. A lot of them wind up in cable films or independent theatrical releases.

[Misunderestimator]

29. Arnold sure broke out of his stereotype!

:rofl:

[antigone382]

25. Denzel Washington actually has a pretty good range, compared to many.

However, over all I can see patterns in many of the characters he portrays. He generally plays a hero who has some level of authority, often in law enforcement, as in Fallen, but also in other capacities, such as a football coach in Remember the Titans. His characters work from deeply held principles, with a firm sense of right and wrong, though they are also realists, clever and good at thinking on their feet and staying one step ahead of their antagonists. However, over the course of their quest to see that the right thing is done, the characters Washington portrays generally put a great deal at stake, and run the risk of losing everything; career, family, life, and integrity. I guess you could say that he plays the prototypical hero.

But like I said, he has a pretty good range for a movie star actor, and I've occasionally seen him play villains and other characters outside of the type I described.

[ContraBass Black]

36. In which films does he play the villain?

[cestpaspossible]

14. Would you hire Vin Diesel to play a poet?

Would you hire Woody Allen to play an action hero?

Would you hire Kathy Bates to play a dumb blonde?

[Ivan Sputnik]

15. It depends on the actor and the role

Think of Adam West or the cast of Gilligan's Island. If an actor becomes famous for playing a particularly cartoonish, unusual or exaggerated character, then typecasting is more likely to be a problem. The producers think the public can't see them as anything other than the character they are famous for.

[Bunny]

16. Well, can you imagine Gary Burghoff playing anyone other than

Radar O'Reilly? I can't, even though I know that's unfair.

[Dogmudgeon]

30. Burghoff has a MUCH better rep in Theater

He does summer stock almost every year at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA, and never plays a reworked Radar O'Reilly. He's also managed to snag a few of his fellow M*A*S*H players to drop by for photo-ops and fundraisers, since BCP is non-profit and does a lot of public philanthropic work.

--p!

[Bunny]

32. I had heard that he did a lot of summer stock.

Good for him, with the fund-raising!

[asthmaticeog]

18. Curtis Armstrong will always be Booger to me.

[Dogmudgeon]

31. Even better in "Better Off Dead"

He played the stoner friend of John Cusack in JC's breakthrough film. That's an excellent, hilarious film, by the way; Armstrong has some classic quotes.

He also played Bruce Wayne's new butler in a recent TV special about Batman.

--p!

[Beware the Beast Man]

38. But he was a mean Herbert Viola, too.

:thumbsup:

[DawgHouse]

19. It's like "Tootie" from The Facts of Life

"Tootie" has a real name but I'll always call her Tootie no matter where she pops up.

[LeftyMom]

20. Ever see "Psycho?"

The lead in that movie, Anthony Perkins, was being groomed by the studio to be the sort of leading man ladies would swoon over (handsome, smart, really really gay, you know, the usual.) They put a lot of effort into it (back them studios kept stables of actors and tended to think in the longer term of building thier careers.)

Then he did Psycho. The problem was he was so believeable, and the movie was so memorable, after that nobody saw him as anything but the creepy guy running the Bates motel. His career never really recovered, although he had relatively steady work doing sequels and other films and TV guest spots.

[BiggJawn]

28. Max Baer

Jethro "I done Graduated 6th Grade" Bodine from "The Beverly Hillbillies".

I only recall seeing him in 2 or 3 other movies after that, and it was always playing a country bumpkin.

You make a huge impression on the fickle public playing one type of character, and BAM! that's the only role you ever get offered again...

Baer gave up and became a director, I think....

[Ellen Forradalom]

34. You use the cast operator

to, for example, cast an int to a char.

Oh? You're not talking about C programming?

[ContraBass Black]

37. Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

(gasp) ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Nice. I wonder how many people will pick up on that one when they see the subject line.

[MrSandman]

35. Henry Fonda...

Did he ever play a drk character?

Only one I remember. But he did it oh so well.