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Neil Patrick Harris, seen here acting somewhat contrary to his normal appearance.
"Nobody messes with Adam West!"
"Nobody messes with Adam We!"
Some actors get... reputations that just won't go away. Maybe they're famous for being divas on the set. Maybe they're famous for only playing certain roles— or even worse, only playing one role. Nobody will let them forget it. They can struggle mightily to earn a new reputation as decent people who can play a variety of roles.
Or they can resign themselves to their fate, and make a career out of it by Adam Westing.
Adam Westing is a form of Self Parody where actors play either themselves, or a Captain Ersatz of themselves, or a Captain Ersatz of their most famous role...and they play it as a total Jerkass, a total idiot, or both. More rarely, they play the character as the exact opposite of what they're most famous for, but still a Jerkass and an idiot.
While this can be an Affectionate Parody, it can also be a way for the actor to vent their spleen against a part that got old fast and/or ruined their career, until it amounts to a Take That against themselves. Particularly bitter actors will make the parody a Deconstruction of their old part, explaining how it was a horrible role and nobody should watch it. Like all Deconstruction, this can come full circle, with the actor doing a Reconstruction Self Parody. Sure the role was stupid, but they enjoyed it.
Compare closely to the use of Meta Casting, where this can be turned around and made impressionable by playing off this personality.
Adam Westing is most often found among actors who had three different forms of Type Casting:
- Actors who had to act goofy all the time and never got a chance for serious work. If they must be goofy, let it be in mocking goofiness.
- Actors who had to act dreadfully serious all the time, until it was impossible not to laugh at their own work.
- Prisoners of Pollyanna, who couldn't so much as drink in public and need to cut loose.
See also The Danza, where the character's name is clearly taken from the actor/actress portraying him/her.
Examples
- Adam West, the Trope Namer, couldn't get serious work after Batman. He has embraced it; almost every role he's had since is either a parody of Batman the goofy superhero, Adam West the washed-up actor, or both at once (as in his role on The Fairly Oddparents).
- Or his role in Batman The Animated Series "The Gray Ghost", where he plays a washed- up actor who can't get any decent work because everyone associates him with his role as a cheesy superhero
- He played a washed-up superhero who turned out to be a deluded actor on Kim Possible. His character was even named "Timothy North".
- And he played another deluded actor in the pilot for Lookwell, a Conan-O'Brien-and-Robert-Smigel produced show. In this version, he had formerly played a detective on TV and thought he could use his actor training as Genre Savvy to solve real crimes.
- And a
space hero overhyped pizza delivery boy in Meet The Robinsons.
- He also played a goofy rendition of himself on The Simpsons, in which he drives the Batmobile from the show (which is now a broken down wreck), complains about the Michael Keaton Batman films (Taps his pecs- "Pure West."), and dances the "Batoosie" while The Simpsons slowly back away.
- Also Johnny Bravo.
- In the Histeria episode "The Legion of Super Writers", he voiced a superhero-portrayed Ernest Hemingway.
- Currently, his biggest role is as the Cloudcuckoolander Adam West, Mayor of Quahog in Family Guy.
- Bizarrely, he voices Mayor Grange, the Mayor of Gotham City in The Batman, which begs the question of why Christopher Nolan hasn't cast him in any of his versions of the Batman movies.
- There was talk of having Adam West and Julie Newmar play Bruce's parents in Tim Burton's Batman, for the sole reason that they would be shot and the idea of a darker Batman embraced. For whatever reason it never happened.
- That idea is being brought back to life in season two of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which is said to feature the death of Bruce's parents. Also, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill (voice actors of Batman and Joker in the DCAU) are guest-starring as well.
- West played superhero the Galloping Gazelle in the TV episode and video game of Goosebumps story Attack of the Mutant. In the TV version, the Galloping Gazelle was washed-up and bailed on the kid protagonist because he thought he was too old for the job.
- West starred as an aging TV Space Commando personality Captain Blasto in an episode of Rugrats.
- West played a lawyer defending a rap star who made a video of himself whizzing on a schoolgirl in The Boondocks. In typical over-the-top West fashion, of course. It's like he doesn't even want to stop Adam Westing anymore.
- West also appears in 30 Rock as the celebrity guest at Jack Donaghy's birthday party. After he flubs the introduction and gets thrown out, he complains that he was promised a sandwich and hasn't received it.
- Back in the 70's and 80's, he was the voice of Batman in both Filmation's The New Adventures Of Batman (also in which Burt Ward voiced Robin), and also in the last couple of seasons of Hanna Barbera's Super Friends.
- Also the major from Dr Mc Ninja's town is in essence a Mayor Adam West, pretty much as portrayed in Family Guy. Can't recall if he was actually named Adam West, but it'd hardly be a surprise.
- In Drop Dead Gorgeous, he plays the lowest-possible-budget "celebrity" on the video promoting a beauty pageant, complete with words to the effect of "You might even get to meet a... CELEBRITY!" Perfect for the role, too.
- In one episode of Diagnosis Murder, he cameos as a washed-up actor who was made famous by playing half of a crime-fighting duo, Tuttle and the Mummy.
- In a 1995 episode of Hope & Gloria - a short-lived television series, he played himself doing a theatre performance of Love Letters with former Batman villainess Julie Newmar also playing herself. The main character was led to believe he was her father. The program referenced his autobiography and his real name of Bill Anderson.
- Almost every other role William Shatner has had since Star Trek is him playing William Shatner the egotist, or a character who is that under a different name... He specifically avoids the I Am Not Spock effect, by virtue of creating a "SHATNER" persona, of which Kirk is but one mere part. One must wonder, however, if it has reached the level of enlightened self-parody or if he has become genuinely unhinged (Mad magazine once put it that he is trying, thirty years too late, to prove to everyone that he was always "in on the joke") - see his appearance on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross.
- Shatner's co-star George Takei, a.k.a. Sulu, generally Adam Wests in live action, but can get quite subtle and effective in voice acting. A recurring theme, if they don't get into his sexuality, tends to be drinking.
- He appears as a parody version of himself on Malcolm In The Middle in "Hal Grives," reduced to some demeaning job of some kind and drinking from a garden hose.
- He previously made a cameo in 3rd Rock From The Sun which featured the Solomons charging stuff to his hotel account until he was dragged away by security screaming "You can't do this to me! I'm GEORGE TAKEI, DAMN IT!"
- And an episode of Will And Grace where he played a version of himself still in the closet until he was 'finally outed' on a public TV show.
- And in an episode of Scrubs, he plays "A Priest who looks like Mr. Sulu".
- There's also this PSA
 where he plays a camp gay version of himself for laughs. Wicked, squirm-inducing laughs.
- And in Psych, he plays a pompous, egotistical version of himself who simply has to be in the limelight.
- Which allowed Shawn and Gus to infiltrate the convention where he was the guest of honor. How did they do it? They pretended to be Takei's personal assistants. When they were confronted by Takei himself, Shawn explained that Takei had fired his previous assistants for incompetence, which he fully believed.
- Takei had a more dignified recent cameo as Prowl's martial arts teacher Yoketron in an episode of Transformers Animated.
- Also had a cameo as "Mr Sulu" on The Simpsons episode where Homer joins the Naval Reserve.
- There is also a Muppets Tonight episode (the one with Andie Mac Dowell I think?) where Takei bores the pants off of Beaker and then some penguins on the subject - his role in Star Trek!
- Little-known Canadian sci-fi-com Alienated has him showing up and ordering a "Gin and.. Gin."
- Rod Serling once appeared on The Jack Benny Show as an eccentric man known only as "Mr. Zone."
- In Dr Katz Professional Therapist, every main character was the voice actor doing a self-parody. The patients were all stand-up comics replaying the 'total neurotic loser bits' from their own stand-up acts, to animation. Dr. Katz is the only one with original lines.
- By the end of the fifth season of Degrassi The Next Generation, the show had gotten so melodramatic and earnest that the actors (and the writers) needed to relax and let off steam. They did it with a truly epic amount of Adam Westing, both on their show and others. To take maybe 1 percent of what they did:
- Craig, the show's Tragic Hero, is a sensitive, emotional musician who has very tragic teen romances and often ruins things with his grandiosity. Craig's actor guest-starred in Radio Free Roscoe as an incompetent wannabe musician, dripping with self-indulgent Wangst and more-artistic-than-thou pretentiousness, whose "sensitive, tortured soul" is an act that he uses to seduce girls.
- In TV specials and "behind the scenes" pieces, actress Stacie Farber (who played the shows' grim Goth) never lost an opportunity to point out that in real life, she's a preppy fashionista who loves all the things the goth found phony.
- One of many Adam Westing Degrassi (and Instant Star) commercials from the sixth season: "I'm a Degrassi, and I'm an Instant Star." (A lot of the humor is lost if you don't know the show, unfortunately.) It ends with Too Dumb To Live Derek somehow becoming even dumber than he is on the show.
- The Futurama movie "Into the Wild Green Yonder" featured Penn Jillette as a head who barely fit in his jar and worked with a Teller who was dead and the act was pretty much the same.
- The Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead" guest stars Penn and Teller as an even more irritating comedy duo of the future.
- Even though he's gotten other roles recently, Neil Patrick Harris plays "himself" in the Harold And Kumar movies. The joke is his role is the total opposite of his real self - an outrageous, drug-addicted, womanizer instead of a timid, low-key homosexual.
- Similarly, Wayne Brady appears in an episode of Chappelle's Show as an over the top, violent and vulgar comedian out to steal the titular character's show — a complete opposite of what Wayne Brady is like in real life, and a result of one of Paul Mooney's characters saying "White people love Wayne Brady, because he makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X."
- In the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Brendan Fraser plays D.J. Drake, a security guard and former stuntman. When Daffy doesn't believe the latter, he claims he was in the Mummy movies "more than that guy Brendan Fraser was." At the end of the movie, he meets the "real" Brendan Fraser (obviously also played by Fraser), who acts like a total Jerkass to D.J. prompting him to punch Brendan in the face.
- Tom Baker's work on Little Britain as The Narrator is an exaggeration of his on-and-off-screen eccentric personality. "Have you ever done it gaywise? It's a hoot."
- Robert DeNiro in Analyze This — he takes every psycho Mafioso character he's ever played, and lampoons them with gusto.
- Nearly every role R. Lee Ermey has played in the last couple decades is a pastiche of his role in Full Metal Jacket.
- Leslie Nielsen. Though he did the occasional comic-relief role here and there, he was mostly known as a serious actor before the 1980s. Then came Airplane!, in which he played a comedic role in the same deadpan manner — and the rest is history...
- Michael Madsen in Being Michael Madsen - a mockumentary that implies he's just Mr Blonde as an actor, which is terrifying enough as a mental image. Some of his voice acting for video games counts too, as does the fact that in more recent movies (such as Kill Bill) the movie almost relies on you to know what a Michael Madsen character is "supposed" to be like, so it can confound your expectations.
- In The Simpsons episode "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister," Lisa gets a restraining order against Bart and Bart is given an instructional video on restraining orders narrated by Gary Busey, who enters on a motorcycle, introduces himself with an Evil Laugh, and concludes his parable on restraining orders thusly;
"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret; John is me. And Mary is a composite of twelve women and one major film studio that couldn't deal with me because I'm too real."
- In another episode, Stan Lee plays a slightly crazy version of himself who will not leave Comic Book Guy's shop and believes he can turn into the Hulk.
- They also had Michael Moore respond to a request for a source on his claims, with "Your mom!"
- Tim Stack as "TV's Tim Stack" on My Name Is Earl. The character is a narcissistic drunk who holds beauty pageants and parades. Tim Stack is actually a writer for a few of the episodes.
- Another episode had Geraldo Riveira playing Geraldo Riveira.
- The Gag Dub of Super Milk Chan includes live action segments centered around the cast and crew of ADV Films, in which they play themselves as a dysfunctional group of misanthropes and prima donnas.
- Elements of Adam Westing are incorporated into the film Tropic Thunder: Robert Downey, Jr.'s character, an award-winning Australian actor, was revised after he was cast to include attributes of the real-life actor, including his propensity for staying in character for extended periods of time and a turbulent relationship with the press.
- Jon Favreau appeared on The Sopranos as a name-dropping, overly-pretentious jerkass version of himself who'd come to New Jersey to make a movie. Star-struck gangster Christopher was delighted to hang out with "Jon"... until "Jon" stole all his ideas. The real Favreau is a much nicer person.
- Also involving Christopher, when he pitched his idea for Cleaver to Sir Ben Kignsley, who comes off as a total materialistic snob, completely disinterested in anything Christopher's saying. So instead, they have to settle for Daniel Baldwin.
- You'd think after Bloodrayne, a mafioso-slasher film would be a step up?
- This editor doesn't know the show, but there was recently something with Catherine Tate where her character was in a relationship with Daniel Craig but had no idea who he was. This was definitely more along the lines of affectionate self-parody, as the character (and Craig's participation) shows him as a normal guy, in contrast to his characters in Layer Cake, Casino Royale and other films who tend to be rather icy and brutal.
- The Shrek films do this a lot. Antonio Banderas as Puss In Boots anyone?
- What's really funny about that last one is that Antonio Banderas' earliest roles were with Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, who most famously cast him in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as a sensitive, awkward, kind of silly young man engaged to a complete bitch.
- Every time Tay Zonday has appeared on national TV he was definitely Adam Westing for himself... but nowhere is this more obvious than in the Cherry Chocolate Rain video, which he did as an advert for Dr. Pepper's Cherry Chocolate flavoured soda:
- Extras was a show devoted to this, with highlights including:
- In Megas XLR, the character Magnanimous was, as a whole, a parody of Bruce Campbell... voiced by Bruce Campbell. His second appearance even had a chainsaw-and-
boomstick-shotgun-toting mech!
- Gary Owens was known for voicing Hanna-Barbera's limited animation superheroes like Space Ghost, Birdman, and Blue Falcon. In Disney's Raw Toonage, he voiced a parody of those guys: "Badly-Animated Man."
- David Hasselhoff in the Spongebob Squarepants movie. "The Hoff" is on his way to reaching Shatnerian levels of Adam Westing. Witness his cameo in Dodgeball as the coach of the German dodgeball team, screaming that the team's loss shames Germany, their families, and David Hasselhoff! Also, this.
- Robot Chicken does this a lot, as a surprising number of the celebrity parodies feature the actual celebrity. Special mention has to go to the fourth season première, which starts with co-creators Matthew Senreich and Seth Green (himself someone that can't stand the thought of only having a major role in a hit TV show paying hundreds of thousands) looking for jobs from a Joss Whedon as an overly dramatic egotistical nut-job who thinks he has the right to kill them, a Ron Moore who writes Battlestar Galactica by throwing darts to decide who's a Cylon (and decides to kill Seth Green because he thinks he could be one) and Seth MacFarlane as a guy with the reality-warping power to rewrite history to include any random past event he offhandedly mentions, which he does constantly. All of them were voiced by the actual people.
- Some other memorable examples have been Rachael Leigh Cook in a parody of her "This is your brain on drugs" PSA where she goes completely bonkers and starts running around destroying things with the frying pan until finally leaping off building to her death; Joey Fatone playing himself as Karate Kid to revenge the deaths of his fellow N'Sync bandmates; Corey Haim and Corey Feldman as failed-child-actor would-be superheroes; Tila Tequila in her MTV reality show, revealed to be a Terminator-esque cyborg programmed with the sole goal of being a pop celebrity; Stan Lee and Pamela Anderson as the co-hosts of a comic book gossip show, with Stan making increasingly un-subtle innuendos until finally leaping out a window to prevent anyone from finding out his secret identity.
- Ahmed Best as Jar Jar Binks in Robot Chicken Star Wars. 'Nuff said.
- Pierce Brosnan, post-James Bond. His MI 6 agent in The Tailor of Panama seems to be an extremely Large Ham Take That to his James Bond...
- Even more so in The Matador.
- Similarly to the Megas XLR item above, Bruce Campbell plays "A sleazy version of himself" in My Name Is Bruce. In this case, at least partially, Campbell was playing the opposite of his normal persona. His character was bitter about being a B-movie actor. In real life Campbell loves being a B-movie actor because it's fun and not very hard.
- Luisana Lopilato in Casados Con Hijos (the version of Married With Children licensed for Argentina) spoofed the teenage starlet characters she played in shows such as Rebelde Way and Floricienta.
- Bill Pullman spoofed his character from The Grudge in Scary Movie 4.
- Jack Slater in Last Action Hero is an over-the-top parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "action hero" roles. The actor also appears as himself in that movie, prompting a brief encounter between Refugee From TV Land Slater and Arnold.
- Cybill had Cybill Shephard, fallen actress... as Cybill Sheridan, fallen actress.
- Jerry Lewis occasionally does this. What makes him stand out is that he's played this for tragedy rather than comedy, using an exaggerated version of himself rather than the wacky characters from his earlier comedy films. In his appearance on Law And Order SVU he played Detective John Munch's mentally disturbed uncle Andrew, drawing on his experience with his own mental decline to give what is widely regarded as one of the most moving performances in the franchise's history.
- Christopher Eccleston parodied Doctor Who on the The Sarah Silverman Program, playing the title character on the show within a show, Dr. Lazer Rage.
- Kirstie Alley as her character in Fat Actress.
- This commercial starring Michael Bay. Particularly effective since his real-life persona is so close to what one would expect, given his movies.
- Carl Weathers plays himself as a constantly broke, scheming and cheapskate opportunist on Arrested Development.
- Saturday Night Live guests frequently invoke this trope, especially in opening monologues: eg. Bob Saget gives an autograph to a child fan (though the "autograph" turns out to just be a string of dirty words since Saget was exhilarated to be on a show where he could actually use them), who asks for his pen back afterwards; Bob refuses, then reveals that the interior of his jacket is lined with pens stolen from the many kids who sought his autograph.
- Everyone who appeared as a guest on the spoof talk show The Larry Sanders Show was doing this.
- Worth mentioning is David Duchovny, who played himself in love with Larry, propositioning him backstage wherever he appeared.
- BRIAN BLESSED, especially on Have I Got News For You
- Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony ad.
- Matthew Gray Gubler in Matthew Gray Gubler: The Unauthorized Documentary.
- Seiyuu Yuko Goto in Lucky Star playing as hyper masculine biker gang member called 'Gothouther-sama', named after her favorite character in Fist Of The North Star, making fun of how she is always casted as sweet, Yamato Nadeshiko girl, while in reality, she's a hardcore biker.
- Stan Lee often shows up in non-Marvel-licensed movies as an excessively comic-obsessed Stan Lee with delusions of being a super hero himself. It's hard to tell how much is acting since his real life personality is almost an Adam Westing of himself anyway.
- Al Gore, ever since he made An Inconvenient Truth, has appeared a few times in cameos as an over-the-top parody of either a environmentalist super-hero ("A whale is in trouble!") or as a super-egotist who claims credit for everything (as he was mocked for after his 'invented the internet' comment was misconstrued).
- An SNL episode of the Walken Family Reunion, where everyone acts exactly like Christopher Walken.
- Henry Winkler once gave a speech at this troper's college. Not only did he have many of his own awesome stories, but he also managed to slip in an "Ayyyyy!" or two. Furthermore, he actually did bring an atmosphere of cool with him that day.
- Entourage has done this too many times to count. Most recently (episode 5 of the new season) was Jeffrey Tambor.
- Gary Busey and Pauly Shore also come to mind.
- Literary example: Why Not Me? by Al Franken, though completely subverted now that he's a US Senator. Watch C-SPAN and you'll see a soft-spoken guy who seems almost unsure of his words at times, and is deferential almost to a fault to Senate rules and hierarchies. People who were expecting him to call someone a "big fat idiot" on the Senate floor were tragically disappointed.
- Anthony Stewart Head appeared on the UK show Spooks as a smart, well-educated international terrorist who was notorious for duping naive young women into helping him carry out his attacks. He apparently had a particular thing for blondes...
- In perhaps the most multi-layered display of Adam Westing in film, Roger Moore appeared in Cannonball Run as the bored Jewish heir to an underwear tycoon, who posed as actor Roger Moore to impress a succession of high-tone women, also adopting the mannerisms and gadgets of James Bond, most notably his Aston Martin DB5. His performance therefore incorporated a straight self-parody of how he'd been typecast as Bond, a parody of his suave-sex-symbol image, and a Captain Ersatz Take That (as Bond's name is never mentioned) toward his most famous role.
- Elisabeth Shue appeared Hamlet 2. She quit acting to become a nurse in a sperm bank. It's implied that she's a nymphomaniac.
- Tracy
Jordan Morgan, 30 Rock.
- Tommy Chong appeared as a guest on The George Lopez Show and as a semi-regular on That70s Show, playing essentially the same character: A burned-out not-so-ex-hippie stoner.
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