NoFace for Film

When a young actor is first starting out in the business, he or she probably feels lucky to get any role. As the actor becomes more well-known and established, he/she may start feeling that he/she can now get any role, right?

Well, not quite.

Often times, actors end up falling under one of three cursed roles, and it can be tough to extricate oneself from such a curse. Many situations can contribute to escaping the curse, such as the actor’s own abilities and the audience’s willingness (intentional or no) to release the actor from this curse.

These three kinds of cursed roles are merely based on my own observations, and I offer no possible solutions to them.

I. The Actor is Too Well-Known.
Let’s face it: when we watch a movie with say, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, or Julia Roberts, we don’t see their characters. We see Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts. An actor’s job is to portray a character and have the audience believe for a brief moment in time that this character is real. The audience is supposed to be absorbed into the story through the plot, setting, and characters. But the problem with superstar celebrities is that their real-life identities overpower any role they play. Therefore the audience isn’t watching the tale of two vampires- they’re watching Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

The actors who are most likely to escape this trap are the character actors. Because they’re often not as well-known, and because they rarely portray the protagonist, character actors are a lot more versatile and easily disappear in their role. The best example is the brilliant Gary Oldman. Oldman has played everyone from Sid Vicious, to Dracula, to Lee Harvey Oswald, to Sirius Black and Commisioner Gordon. In every role you barely recognize the guy; all you see is the character. When the audience watches Oldman on film, they don’t say something like, “Gary Oldman’s after Keanu Reeves.” No, they say, “Dracula kidnapped Keanu Reeves.”

II. The Actor is Typecasted in a Certain Role.
How many times have we seen the same people play the same roles over and over? Many of the actors in Goodfellas play the same mobster roles in Casino and The Sopranos. Other actors (such as Sean Bean) almost always play the villain, because that’s how the public recognizes him best. Often times, the public just has a hard time accepting actors in a totally different role. Can you imagine say, Julia Roberts playing a badass warrior chick with guns? Or maybe The Rock as a stay at home dad? Hardly. It would just be too weird. Years ago, I laughed out loud when I heard that Michelle Pfeiffer was playing an ex-Marine in Dangerous Minds. What the hell? I couldn’t accept it.

However, if orchestrated properly, it is refreshing to see actors play against type. The ability to pull it off is valuable to such actor, since it allows them to stretch and to open up more roles for them. I was stunned to see Elijah Wood as an insane, cannibalistic killer in Sin City. He was Frodo for years, Sin City came along and changed all that. Sure, he’s still Frodo to many, but I now realize that Wood can do so much more than be a cute, angsty Hobbit.

III. The Actor is Typecasted as One Specific Character.
This may be the worst curse of them all- to be condemned to one role for all eternity. George Reeves suffered this fate when he played Superman during the 1950s. The audience just couldn’t see him playing anyone else. Mark Hamill had also fallen in this trap, as he’s forever doomed to always be Luke Skywalker. How many times has he done parodies of Luke in other films? And what about Linda Blair, who will always be known as the possessed little girl from The Exorcist? William Shatner will forever be known to the world as Captain Kirk, whether or not Matt Damon plays a younger version of him (as the rumors say).

I think it helps if several people over the years play the legendary character, like the eight men who have played James Bond, or the five men who have played Batman. It may also help if you’re an actor who has played several memorable characters (i.e., Harrison Ford).

Although this may be the worst curse of all, it also appears to be the hardest to catch. There are hundreds of excellent, memorable movies, but few have characters that reach iconic status, such as Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones. Sure, Steel Magnolias was a good movie with great characters, but hell if I recall any of their names.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you have the same observations as I do about certain roles? How do you think actors can try to avoid these role traps? Is it even possible to do so, or are most actors destined at some point to catch one of these three curses?

Technorati Tags: actors, role, typecast, character,