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Type casting


Mike

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Christopher Lloyd as the Rev. Jim Ignatowski on Taxi, I remember going to the theater to see Star Trek - Search for Spock, and the minute, the minute Chris came on screen as Klingon Kruge, the theater bust out laughing. It was NOT a comedic role...at all.

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- Al Pacino from Dog Day Afternoon and Scarface. Ever since then, he's been doing that schtick: One moment he's carrying on a normal conversation and the next he's screaming like some crazed, out-of-control lunatic.

- Woody Allen played the same neurotic, sexually-charged cerebrotonic for a bunch of his films. Wouldn't have the guy any other way.

- James Cagney will be known for all the two-bit goon roles he had in gangster films of the 30s. Sure, he did other starring performances, but who can name of his comedies?

- Bela Lugosi was never anyone else other than Dracula.

- Boris Karloff was never anyone else other than Frankenstein.

- Peter Lorre will always be known as the "creepy" guy. He came from the silent era of film-making, so he used his features a lot to his advantage in a field renown for placing beauty in top roles.

- Robert Mitchum was a kind of "fall-guy" in film noirs: The bad guy who has a change of heart at the last moment and does something good. His characters had the sort of human depth in an age where movies were still about simple good and evil, right and wrong - his characters were double-sided.

- Rodney Dangerfield will always be the wise guy.

- W.C. Fields is the king of wise guys.

- Charlie Chaplin was much better at silent slapstick (can anyone name talkies other than The Great Dictator?). Same goes for Buster Keaton.

- Lucille Ball will always be "Lucy" even if she starred in a lot of films.

- The first actor I thought of as the quintessential typecast is Edward G. Robinson: Usually the head of a bootlegging gang. Sometimes, he'd play the inspector, but even Warner Brother cartoons put him as the gangster.

e-robinson.jpg

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Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebben or Frank Drebbenesqe characters.

George Reeves as Superman. Some people speculate that it was his typecasting as Superman that led to his suicide (if indeed it was a suicide).

Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett. (Although he did have a reasonably successful career as a song and dance man before he took on the role that made him famous.)

Barbara Eden as Jeannie.

Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington.

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