Cross-Cast Role

"Remember when you were a kid, and you saw the legendary TV musical version of Peter Pan, and Peter was striding around the stage declaring, 'I WON'T grow up!'? Remember what you thought, in your innocent, naïve, trusting childlike way? You thought: 'THAT'S not a little boy. That's obviously middle-aged actress Mary Martin making a fool of herself.'"

— Dave Barry Turns 40

This is a role that, for whatever reason, is played by an actor who is of a different gender to the character. Some common reasons for this involve a gender imbalance in the supply of actors:

1. In historic times across multiple cultures, theater troupes were often all-male, usually because the Moral Guardians have decreed that women should not go on The Wicked Stage; such troupes will use this trope by necessity.
2. Community and school theater companies frequently have more women than men. Many plays (especially older ones) have more male than female roles. Cross-casting is one possible solution, though Gender Flip or Acting for Two may also be used. Similarly, sketch comedy groups are frequently all-male, so female roles are often handed to men; it helps that many cultures find men dressed as women inherently funny.
3. Certain university drama groups only use male actors, a tradition that began as a necessity in the days when women could not be students. This practice started to decline at the tail end of the 20th century.
4. If the role is to be a sufficiently young child, the actor's gender matters much less. In particular, infants are frequently used in film and television without regard to gender. Days of Our Lives famously got into hot water in the soap opera press for hiring two infant girls to play an infant male character and then callously canning both of them when they started to grow into toddlers and began to look more like girls. A soap opera recap on Television Without Pity also referenced this trope: "The infant actor need not match the character's gender. The parents are responsible for having to explain to their [cisgender] son why he was in a pink dress and wearing pink hair bows as a baby".

Other common reasons are varied:

1. In any kind of production with a lot of difficult singing, the roles of young boys are frequently played by women. Good boy sopranos can be tough to find, especially if you also need them to be able to act; they also have a very specific vocal timbre which may not be compatible with the production's overall aesthetic (e.g., in Opera). Not to mention if they are close enough to adolescence a boy's voice may change completely by surprise, overnight. Compare the high proportion of young boy characters in animation played by adult women.
2. Early opera also has a number of roles written for castrati: boys who were castrated to prevent their voices from changing. Since genital mutilation for entertainment purposes has obviously fallen out of favor, modern productions of such roles fall under this trope by necessity.^note The other options are to cast a male falsettist (which encompasses most countertenors) or, if the production is exceptionally lucky, to find a man whose voice naturally falls in a typically female range for whatever reason (most often a medical condition, especially of the hormonal variety that prevents a man's voice from changing).
3. The director is making a political statement—for example, about gender.
4. For a long time, it was standard practice for Transgender characters to be played by cisgender actors of the opposite gender. Additionally, some productions will have a character's pre-transition self played by an actor of the opposite gender, and their post-transition self by an actor of the correct one in order to emphasize the change in their appearance.
5. Very frequent when animals are used in films, especially if the species show little sexual dimorphism.
6. In the Victorian/Edwardian era, when decent women were not supposed to show their legs in public, Fanservice was one reason why actresses so often found themselves costumed as boys.
7. As a joke, often involving cameo appearances by well-known actors or actresses playing roles of the opposite gender, or stuff like having a bulky and masculine man wearing women clothes.
8. The pantomime traditions of the Main Boy (the main male character being played by a woman) or the Pantomime Dame (a peripheral female character being played by a usually Large Ham male) are coming into play.

In Western theatre and opera, a male character intended to be played by a female performer is commonly referred to as a "pants," "breeches," or "trouser" role.

Love scenes involving these characters are a notorious source of Ho Yay.

Compare Cross-Dressing Voices, which is the voice acting equivalent. In a common Casting Gag, you can often expect cross-cast roles to cause Recursive Crossdressing. Contrast with Gender Flip, in which a character is reimagined or rewritten to be the opposite gender, but the actor plays a character of their own gender.

Please do not list "retroactive" examples of transgender actors who performed characters of their biological sex before they transitioned some point post-production. This trope requires the casting to be an intentional decision. When they were cast for the role, they were considered by the world at large to be the same gender as the character. For example, Elliot Page played real life cisgender teenage girl Sylvia Likens in 2006's An American Crime, but had been assigned female at birth and was presenting as such when cast for that film. If the film was being made now, after Page's transition, a cisgender girl would be cast by the director as Sylvia. The same applies to Page's other pre-transition roles as, with the exception of his character from The Umbrella Academy (2019), none of these characters have been retconned as trans.

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Examples:

In-Universe examples:

Anime & Manga

• One official doujin of Black Lagoon, about a scenario in which the cast of the series were Animated Actors, reveals that the male-presenting Hansel was portrayed by a child actress.
• In Bokura no Hentai, the Distant Finale shows that Tamura's first acting role as an adult is in a play where he plays a female character. He was always in his element dressed in female clothes as a teenager.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • The main character's class held a production of "Sleeping Beauty". Because the roles were hidden by a cover and required each member of the class to write their name in the blank slots, when the teacher removed the cover they discovered that - basically - Sakura had cast herself as the Prince, Syaoran as the Princess, and Takashi as the Queen - making for a slightly awkward production, especially for Sakura's brother Touya (who of course noticed this well enough). In a halfway example, Tomoyo was cast as the narrator, which is traditionally given to a male actor (but not strictly).
  • In the anime, this also happens to Touya's class production of "Cinderella" in which he plays the title character and a girl in his class (who has a crush on him) plays the prince.
• In the anime adaptation of D.N.Angel the school play is done with entirely male actors and an all-female production team. The excuse the ladies give for this decision is to respect Shakespeare and his all-male acting troupe; the real reason is that they want to see the male lead and his Ambiguously Gay rival, cast as the female and male leads respectively, share romantic scenes together.
• In His and Her Circumstances, Maho Izawa is cast in a play as an android Bishōnen.
• In Fruits Basket, Yuki Sohma is cast as the Fairy Godmother of the class's Cinderella stage play. Because of this, the girls in his class don't have to fight each other for the role of his Love Interest because the fairy godmother has none.
• In K-On!, the main characters' class puts on a production of Romeo and Juliet for their school festival. As it's an all-girls school, the male parts are played by girls.
• Several of the productions from Kaleido Star feature females in male roles. Ana especially tends to play male characters.
• In Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Kashima often cross-casts as the Prince Charming in school plays, in a clear reference in Takarazuka Revue's otakoyaku roles.
• One episode of Michiko & Hatchin has the duo meet a man who is famous for playing female roles. His son permanently crossdresses, in hopes of becoming a good actor like his dad.
• Madoka Kugimiya of Negima! Magister Negi Magi is frequently cast as a male due to being extremely tomboyish. She doesn't like this one bit.
• In Ranma ½, Akane has been stuck playing Romeo in school plays because she was the only one athletic enough for the role. Finally, she gets a chance to play Juliet, but there's still a problem casting her love interest....
• StarMyu's first season has the obligatory Imagine Spot of Tengenji playing Juliet, but season 2 reveals that in middle school, Tatsumi played a princess in the school play, and Sawatari played his knight. Their juniors still call them "princess-senpai" and "knight-senpai". The same episode also contains a flashback to Otori playing a female role in a play. The play performed in that episode also features a male student as the main female character, though the character's maid is played by a female student.
• Noble Witches: The titular witches put on a very loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet for a group of orphans, with Wittgenstein playing Romeo and Keera playing Lord Montague.
• Tomo-chan Is a Girl!: When planning a production of Cinderella for the culture festival, Class 1-A promptly volunteers Tomo to play the Prince. They back off when Tomo objects, but when it becomes clear the second choice for all the on-stage romance with the pretty princess is Jun she does a frantic 180.
• Tsukipro The Animation features Rikka and Dai (both male) playing a princess and knight in a commercial for women's cosmetics. Their previous ad series for the makeup brand featuring a male star (Gravi's Hajime) was such a huge success (and Hajime looked so good with that red lipstick), that they decided to try taking it a step further. Rikka has no problem with it, and the episode centers on Dai's anxiety over whether he's a good enough performer to star with Rikka.
• In UFO Baby, the infant Ruu is cast as a baby princess in the main group's play. Keeping his gender concealed is no issue. Keeping his psychic powers concealed, on the other hand...
• In Wandering Son, the school holds a play where all the girls play the male parts and the guys play the female parts.

Comic Strips

• Safe Havens:
  • Dave and Samantha were understudies for Romeo and Juliet respectively, however, when the person playing Juliet fell sick and Samantha was at band practice, Dave volunteered to play Juliet since he knew her part by heart as well thanks to him and Samantha practicing together. Then, when the person playing Romeo quit because he didn't want to kiss a boy, they hastily got Samantha to come in...but by then the play was about to start and they didn't have time to change costumes, so Samantha just played Romeo instead in her band uniform.
  • Ming plays 'Wilma' Loman in a Havens University production of Death of a Salesman.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles: Bolt references this in "The Imaginary Letters" when he mentions that the role of Lassie is played by a male dog:
  Bolt: Except it's not a her — she's a he! For that matter, so was Lassie. He said female collies shed their ruffs seasonally, so that's always been a skirt role for a boy pooch.
• In a Glee fanfic named "Defying Gravity", Kurt plays Elphaba in a community theater production of Wicked.
• Steel Soul Saga: In Steel Soul, if Sweetie Belle's mention of the pirate character she's playing as "He" is any hint. Although, Rarity calls it a she.
• Inheritance of Cards and Demons: Rin Okumura is volunteered by his classmates to play Snow White in the school play because he has Raven Hair, Ivory Skin. There's also an element of mockery, but that quickly disappears when the other teens see him in costume — also, the prince is a girl.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Adventures Of Barry Mckenzie and its sequel Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, Aunt Edna is played by Barry Humphries. Humphries would later find fame reprising the role in numerous productions in the US and UK.
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day:
  • Emily portrays Peter Pan for a school play.
  • In a Real Life example Alexander's youngest brother Trevor is played by twin girls.
• In Escape from New York, male inmates perform in drag in a stage musical in Manhattan prison.
• In Farewell My Concubine, the actor who plays the concubine in the titular Show Within a Show is a very effeminate gay man.
• Floating Weeds: Sumiko, the lead actress in a kabuki theater troupe, plays a male bandit during the show. The troupe has several male actors, so apparently they just feel like she's best at it.
• Iron Monkey: The young future hero of China Wong Fei-Hung is played by actress Angie Tsang.
• The 2019 adaptation of Little Women shows Meg doing one for a play she and her sisters are performing, as it takes a while for them to get a male friend that could fit such roles.
• In Mädchen in Uniform when the girls do a play at their all-girls school.
• The Messengers: Then child actress Jodelle Ferland was Michael, a boy.
• In Outrageous Fortune, Shelley Long's ambition was to play Hamlet. (Sarah Bernhardt was the first, or at least most famous early, example of a woman playing Hamlet actually happening.)
• Inverted in Shakespeare in Love. Because women aren't allowed to act, Violet disguises herself as "Thomas Kent" to play women's roles.
• In Tropic Thunder, Kirk Lazarus is an extreme method actor who often transforms himself for his roles and has won 5 Academy Awards. According to supplemetary material, one of those awards was for Best Actress. This is given a nod in the ending of the movie where Lazarus presents Tugg Speedman with the Academy Award for Best Actor. Said award is always presented by the previous year's winner of Best Actress.
• In Wild Child, Freddie tells Poppy that he was Alice in the school play. "All boys, before you look at me weirdly!"

Literature

• Jack Aubrey of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series proudly mentions having played Ophelia—or, at least, one-third of Ophelia—as a midshipman. It was a shipboard production so they naturally didn't have any women; of the midshipmen, one was considered pretty enough to be Ophelia, another had an appropriately-pitched speaking voice, and Jack could carry a tune.
• A Brother's Price has an all-female opera ensemble performing a play about the civil war, including a sad monologue by a man involved in said war. He is played by a woman. Not the usual lack of men in unpaid theatre - men simply have Gender Rarity Value.
• Discworld:
  • In Wyrd Sisters, due to the Shakespeare-based setting, Olwyn Vitoller's acting troupe are are all male (women aren't allowed on stage). His adopted son, Tomjon, ends up usually playing the leading lady, as his magically-enhanced acting talents allow him to convincingly play a woman to the point that male audience members fall for him.
  • Lieutenant Blouse in Monstrous Regiment mentions he "got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree", at his all-boys school.
  • Similarly, Lady Sibyl mentions in The Fifth Elephant that she won much acclaim playing the romantic lead in a dwarfish opera at her school. This is somewhat of a double example, as a) it was an all-girls school, and b) dwarfs are remarkably ambiguous about their biological sex. On the other hand, it might not be this trope at all, considering that it is not known what the sexes of the dwarves involved were. Their gender, on the other hand, was "dwarf", as they're a one-gender race by tradition.
• In Little Women, Jo relishes the opportunity to play male roles when she and her sisters put on plays, and Meg does so as well, since they don't have any male friends to participate.
• The Shakespeare Stealer series is set in Shakespeare's time, so all actors in the company are male (with one exception). Female roles are played by "prentices", adolescent boys who can still pass for women (it's stated that they "graduate" to male roles when their voices change).

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development has a convoluted example when George Michael tries out for Much Ado About Nothing to get closer to Maeby; she ends up playing Beatrice, and he ends up understudy to STEVE HOLT's Benedick. Then Tobias ends up directing the play, and when Maeby quits, Tobias suggests that he will play Beatrice. By the end of the episode, Maeby and STEVE HOLT are still playing Benedick and Beatrice, only each one is playing the other gender.
• On The City (1995), cisgender actress Carlotta Chang played Azure C., who was revealed to be transgender.
• In Full House, Rebecca played Romeo in a school play at an all-girls school.
• In one flashback on Highlander, it's shown that in 1663, Duncan played Kate a production of The Taming of the Shrew.
• Gilmore Girls: Paris plays Romeo to Rory's Juliet for a class project after the boy who was supposed to be playing Romeo gets expelled at the last minute. Dean is... intrigued.
  Dean: So, did you and Paris actually kiss, or was it, like, a stage thing?
  Rory: A lady never kisses and tells.
• In High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, male student Seb Matthew-Smith auditions for and lands the female role of Sharpay due to the new drama teacher finding the idea "so fresh".
• Home and Away took it all the way, with Annie playing Romeo and then-boyfriend Romeo as Juliet. The director was trying to make a statement of some sort.
• Home Improvement played with this in that it wasn't the joke itself, but rather just an excuse for Jill and Wilson (who both had experience playing Juliet) to fight over who would help Randy practice the "Romeo" role. Jill also mentions having played Othello, to which Randy quips that she was probably a very convincing black man.
• Sophie of Leverage plays Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman; she's so Giftedly Bad that Nate doesn't realize that she's playing him as a man, leading to a particularly cringe-worthy Compliment Backfire.
• A Myth Arc in Season 1 of Liv and Maddie has Liv land an audition for the lead in the movie Space Werewolves. The protagonist Tristan is male, but the producers watched a specific episode of her Show Within a Show and loved it so much that they change the role into a girl just for her.
• Married... with Children: Griff once played Dorothy at a school play version of The Wizard of Oz.
• Played with on the 30 Rock episode "Secret Santa":
  Liz Lemon: Yeah, I did plays in high school too. I was John Proctor in The Crucible.
  Nancy: You went to an all-girls school?
  Lemon: No.
• Parks and Recreation: Jerry played Tinkerbell at his all-boys school.
• On Young Sheldon, Sheldon becomes disillusioned with science for one episode and decides to take up acting instead, and gets cast as the lead in Annie. In the end, he gets stage fright and bows out at the last second, forcing the director (played by Jason Alexander) to play the part instead.
• During the 1980s, Australian puppet show Bananas in Pajamas had a segment where all six characters performed a play based on Cinderella. All of roles except for Amie's were cross-casted, with the Rat playing Cinderella, the titular bananas playing the Fairy Godmothers, Lulu playing the prince, and Morgan and Amie playing the stepsisters.
• Patrick from Schitt's Creek tells David about how he played the coveted role of Mary in his all-boys high school's Christmas pageant.
• When the team has to stage Romeo and Juliet in Legends of Tomorrow, Ava takes the role of Lord Capulet, with a fake goatee to sell it. Conversely, Nate (male) plays Juliet for a few scenes before Zari (female) takes over, much to William's confusion.
  Shakespeare: Is that a man?
  Charlie: [a genderfluid shapeshifter] Does it matter?
• Winter Begonia: Shang Xirui, one of the main characters, is a male Peking Opera dan performer (i.e. a man who plays female roles onstage).

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street examples:
  • Bert once had to fill the role of a princess in the production of a story called "The Magic Apple". And the groom was Ernie. Bert is extremely reluctant to play this part in the sketch.
  • Bert is again dragooned into playing a woman in A Muppet Family Christmas, when the Sesame gang performs an enactment of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, where he is "Mamma in her kerchief" to Ernie's "I in my cap".

Theatre

• In The Cat and the Fiddle, Pierrot in the Show Within a Show is played as a trouser role by Odette.
• The role of Edwin Drood in the musical Drood. Announced by the Chairman as being played by the "famous male impersonator, Miss Alice Nutting."
• M. Butterfly has this as a plot point: a foreigner visiting the all-male Chinese opera mistakes performer Song for a woman, which he uses to his advantage. The playbills of most productions try to hide the fact that the character is played by a male actor, so The Reveal is shocking.
• Company: In the revised Swan Lake, Rothbart and the Black Swan share an actor.
• In The Phantom of the Opera, Christine gets relegated to the role of the Page Boy rather than the lead as the Phantom insists.
• The Farndale Avenue plays revolve around an all-female amateur theatre troupe, so all the male roles in their plays are played by women. An inversion of the rule occurs in The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Operatic Society's Production of The Mikado, which begins with an announcement that the actress playing the schoolgirl Pitti-Sing has become unavailable at short notice, so for one night only, the role will be played by the elderly male vicar. Similarly, in The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of Macbeth, the director receives word after the show has already started that the actress playing Lady Macbeth will be unable to make it, and responds by forcing the male stage manager to step in as understudy.

Video Games

• In Jade Empire female roles in plays are played by men, or at least "women who have the courtesy of pretending to be men pretending to be women," as in old China. In one side quest, the player character is roped into filling in for an actor playing "Lady Fourteen Flowers".
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has an extended sequence wherein the leads are made to act in a school play. The play's director, for her own amusement, has decreed that all roles in the play will be this, leaving Estelle as the dashing red swordsman while Joshua is forced to play the damsel princess.
• One of the Pokestar films in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 has a Pokemon example. The Ledian which fights you with humans from Timegate Travelers saga is referred as female in script, but her sprite is that of a male.
• A3's Spring troupe rewrites Romeo and Juliet into Romeo and Julius, about Heterosexual Life-Partners, to avoid doing this. The Summer troupe, however, does it just fine with their Wholesome Crossdresser member, Yuki.
• Jack Jeanne: As the Tamasaka troupe and the Univeil Theatre Academy only allow men, there are some who get to play female roles (named Jeannes).

Web Comics

• In Bad Machinery, Lottie gets the part of Blake in her (mixed) school's production of Glengarry Glen Ross.
• In Cucumber Quest, Sir Bacon gets cast in the part of Witch-Queen Xylophonia... And he's pretty good at it, getting a standing ovation at the end of the play.
• In El Goonish Shive, during the Pokémon parody "Grace-A-Monsters!" storyline, Nanase plays Professor Oaks grandson.
• The main cast of Faux Pas are mostly animal actors. Randy, a male fox, has been cast as a vixen at least twice, once as "Miss April" in a wildlife calendar, and another time in a car ad that involved a lot of makeup and tacky jewelry. Though his girlfriend Cindy filled in for him at one of the car ads, and she kind of acted as his "stunt double" in a schlocky low-budget sci-fi flick.
• One class assignment in Precocious involved the kids spending some time as each other, drawn randomly. Naturally, some kids end up taking the role of opposite-gender kids. Three of the girls often wear dresses or skirts—Autumn, Tiffany, and Yvette. Jacob drew Autumn to study, while Roddy ended up as Tiffany. NO mention is made by anyone about them being in girl's clothing. (Yvette's role was taken by Kaitlyn. The other girls who were played by boys—Dionne and Ursula—usually wear pants.) Tiffany herself looks just odd in Bud's vest and shirt, though.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender's last episode before the Grand Finale, the Gaang go and see a play based on the entire series up to that point. In a reference to Peter Pan, they find Aang (the lightly-built, hyperactive twelve-year-old) is played by a petite woman. While Aang (and the rest of the group) is disappointed with the entire portrayal of him, the casting choice is what confuses him the most. On the other hand, Toph (a little blind girl, but Boisterous Bruiser and Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy nonetheless) absolutely loves the fact that her part was played by a giant, muscular man.
• In Batman Beyond, Terry takes Bruce to a musical production about Batman. Robin is clearly being played by a woman (and wearing the original bare-legged Dick Grayson costume from the comics).
• In the "U.S. Acres" sections of Garfield and Friends, Wade's usually a victim of this in the fairy tale-themed episodes. This may be because, there's no one else around to fit the role of The Ingenue and the only main female character, Lanolin, is more suited for characters like Mulan. Wade's most known example of this trope is in "Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarves". Subverted when they did “Rumplestiltskin” and Wade was given the role of the miller’s daughter, but he objected that he didn’t want to be a girl.
• Ghost Force: In "Xhypno", Andy tries to get the role of a Damsel in Distress in a film his parents are making when the actress who originally got the role doesn't show up. His parents instead choose Stacy to play the role.
• In one episode of King of the Hill, Peggy mentions that she played Danny Zuko in the high school production of Grease.
• The Magic School Bus:
  • "A Magic School Bus Halloween" has Ms. Frizzle, in the live-action wraparound segments, playing the role of an eccentric old peddler named Archibald Dauntless to show three students (a Keesha/Wanda stand-in, a Carlos/Ralphie stand-in, and an Arnold stand-in played by his voice actor) that scary things are not as they seem.
  • "The Magic School Bus Gets Planted" has Wanda in the role of Jack for a school play of Jack and the Beanstalk, and Arnold and Ralphie in the role of the cow.
• In the Mickey Mouse short "Mickey's Mellerdrammer", which is about Mickey and the gang performing in a play based on Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mickey himself not only plays the title role of Uncle Tom, but he also plays Topsy.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode where the protagonists put on a pageant for Hearth's Warming Eve, all the historical figures are portrayed by the (all-female) main cast. At least one role, Commander Hurricane, is heavily implied to have actually been a stallion, not a mare. And any of the others could have been, even Prince/ss Platinum. This being a very old pageant and one that's performed all over at this time, there were probably male ponies somewhere playing all of the historically female roles as well.
  • The book The Journal of the Two Sisters confirms that Commander Hurricane is indeed the only stallion of the founders.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Forgotten Friendship also confirms that Clover the Clever is male.
  • The episode "Marks For Effort" shows a slide of Chancellor Puddinghead, who is shown to have the body of a stallion.
• The Simpsons:
  • In one episode, Marge is auditioning in a musical based on A Streetcar Named Desire for the role of Blanche DuBois, and at the auditions learns that Ned Flanders is there as well. Flanders reveals that he's actually been in a play of Streetcar before, and the role he played was Blanche DuBois, adding "One of the benefits of going to an all-male acting school."
  • In another episode, Martin Prince gets the role of Lizzie Borden for a school play.
• VeggieTales: Lyle the Kindly Viking has Mr. Lunt as Ophelia when the veggies put on "Omlette".
  Mr. Lunt: [offstage] No! I don't want to [go out in a dress]! It's embarrassing!
  Archibald: [offstage] No, it's tradition! In Shakespeare's time, all the roles were played by men!
  [shoves Mr. Lunt — clad in a pink dress and medieval headdress — onstage]
  Mr. Lunt: (...I still think we're going to get letters about this.) It is I, the fair Ophelia.
  Jimmy Gourd: [completely thrown] Wha... what news, f-fair Ophelia? I b-beseech thee ... milady ...

Trivia examples:

Advertising

• In 2018, American female country singer Reba McEntire was cast as Colonel Sanders, the mascot for Kentucky Friend Chicken, who is portrayed as a Southern Gentleman.
• The infamous Japanese live-action commercial for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (the one with the rapping) had Link played by a 16-year-old schoolgirl. Due to Link's soft features and slight build, this is actually less jarring than you'd think.
• The Taco Bell chihuahua was actually played by a female dog.
• The original Spuds MacKenzie used in 1980's Bud Light advertisements was a male Bull Terrier being played by a bitch. Her name was Honey Tree Evil Eye (or "Evie" for short).

Films — Animation

• In live-action footage of the witch from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the witch is played by Don Brodie and Moroni Olsen. This was done to give her a more aggressive masculine feel.

Films — Live-Action

• Many early kung fu movies from Hong Kong featured women playing male characters. For example, Cheng Pei-Pei made her debut playing a male in the 1963 film The Lotus Lamp.
• In Ace of Aces, Günter Meisner played both Adolf Hitler and his sister Angela.
• In the Swedish comedy film The Adventures of Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are played by British comedians Bernard Cribbins and Wilfrid Brambell, respectively.
• In Airplane!, Ethel Merman, in her final film role, portrays a shell-shocked Army lieutenant who firmly believes he's Ethel Merman.
• The Assignment: Michelle Rodriguez plays Frank, a male hitman (by means of a fake beard and some prosthetics initially) who's subjected to an Easy Sex Change by a Mad Doctor who wanted revenge on him because he had killed her brother. For the rest of the film, he looks like Rodriguez normally does (obviously the reason for this).
• Barbarian has Matthew Patrick Davis as The Mother, a monstruous Bunker Woman.
• In Back to the Future Part II, Michael J. Fox plays most of the members of Marty's future family, including his daughter.
• Blade Runner 2049 uses this in a complicated, spoilerific way to invert this and play it straight at the same time for a double-whammy of plot-twists. Officer K, in his childhood Fake Memories, is played by a boy in flashbacks — but although the events he's remembering are actually real, they're not his memories. They're the childhood memories of the woman Ana Stelline, played by Carla Juri.
• The lead from Cats & Dogs is a male puppy played by multiple dogs, both female and male. This isn't uncommon for animal characters, however not much effort was made to disguise this. The puppy noticeably changes sexes between scenes.
• Stephen Chow's CJ7 features a girl in the role of his son.
• Cloud Atlas, in which most of the cast play multiple roles, has several examples. For instance, Hugo Weaving plays a fat, haughty nurse who looks like this◊.
• In Dark City, Mr. Sleep is a child with the male honorific "Mr.", however he is played in closeups by a girl, and in the long shots by her fraternal twin brother. Of course, the character doesn't have to be male — the strangers may not have paid any attention to gender.
• As revealed in the commentary for Elf the baby Buddy was played by a baby girl.
• In The Exorcist, the face of male demon Pazuzu is played by Eileen Dietz.
• In 1913 short The Evidence of the Film, the role of the messenger boy is played by an 11-year-old girl, probably to make the character look even younger, possibly because the girl in question (Marie Eline) was a famous child star of the day.
• Mr. Jacobi's son Ismael in Fanny and Alexander is played by a woman. There's no obvious reason for this, but since Ismael is a mentally disturbed character who appears to bring about someone's death just by thinking about it, it may be for general creepiness.
• Fantozzi has Fantozzi's daughter Mariangela, whose ugliness is legendary. To get the effect across, she's played (in the first eight films) by an adult man, Plinio Fernando.
• In Flashdance's final dance number to "What a Feeling", Alex's backspin move was performed by breakdancer Richard Colón in drag, since the female body doubles were unable to pull it off.
• The Gamers: Dorkness Rising: Gary tends to forget that he's Cross Playing as the sorceress Luster, so she's portrayed by Gary's actor in Luster's Stripperific outfit for most of the Deep-Immersion Gaming. A female Luster swaps in when someone reminds him — once, by tapping Gary's actor out on-screen.
• In The Golden Child, Jasmine (credited as J.L.) Reate plays the title character.
• Posthumous example in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with the bones of Arch Stanton being those of a Spanish actress who wanted her skeleton to be used for movies, so she could continue acting after her death.
• All versions of Hairspray feature a man as Edna Turnblad (the drag queen Divine in the original 1988 film, and John Travolta in the 2007 film of the musical).
• In the Harry Potter films, Hedwig was always played by a male owl. This is due to the fact that J. K. Rowling didn't realize that only male snowy owls are pure white. That is to say non-magical snowy owls.
  • A more minor example, but Sirius Black's dog form in the third film is modelled after Fern, a female dog.
  • Madame Maxime is played by male basketballer Ian Whyte in full-body shots, presumably due to height.
  • Slytherin's Basilisk in Chamber of Secrets is female, yet is voiced by Jason Isaacs.
• In The Hole ^note The 2009 Joe Dante film, not the 2001 British film, Annie Smith is portrayed by male actor Quinn Lord. Annie is the ghost of a little girl and has a deliberately Uncanny Valley appearance, so cross-casting the role may have been a way to add something else slightly "off" about her face and movements.
• Hook: "Gutless", the bearded pirate who was put in "the boo box", was actually played by renowned actress, Glenn Close.
• In House on Bare Mountain, the headmistress Granny Good is played by actor Bob Cresse (or 'Lovable Bob Cresse as he is billed); very much in the style of a pantomime dame.
• I'm Not There is about six different versions of Bob Dylan. One of them is played by Cate Blanchett.
• It: Chapter Two has Kate Lunman as Chris Unwin, one of the homophobic thugs who assaults Adrian Melon and Don Hagarty at the start of the film.
• Iron Monkey is a prequel revolving around a teenaged Wong Fei-hung, played by Angie Tsang (who shaved her head for the role).
• In Jack and Jill, Adam Sandler plays both the main character and the character's sister, leading to bizarre Disguised in Drag jokes despite Jill's character being biologically female.
• In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Silent Bob as a baby is played by the then infant daughter of Kevin Smith, Harley Quinn Smith.
• In John Wick, John's female puppy, Daisy, is played by a male Beagle puppy named Andy.
• Perry in Kevin & Perry Go Large is played by the very female Kathy Burke.
• In the 2016 TV movie adaptation of Legends of the Hidden Temple, Mikey, a male green monkey and literal depiction of an animal team name from the original game show, was played by a female monkey named Crystal.
• The castrated boy Eli in Let the Right One In is played by Lina Leandersson. The audition for the role was open both to girls and boys.
• The Lord of the Rings required large numbers of competent equestrians as extras to play the Rohirrim and other mounted soldiers. The riding clubs of New Zealand and Australia were able to provide sufficient numbers of horses and riders... but a large number of these riders are women. Thus, many "men of the West" are actually women wearing fake beards.
• In the Soviet musical adaptation of Mary Poppins, Miss Andrew is played by a man (Oleg Tabakov).
• In The Meteor Man, boy character Squirrel is portray by girl actress, Asia Dosreis.
• In the biographic Polish film My Nikifor, the titular character (Nikifor Krynicki, a male primitivist painter) is played by Krystyna Feldman, an 88-year-old woman.
• Nothing but Trouble: John Candy plays both Dennis Valkenheiser and his sister Eldona Valkenheiser.
• In Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor, Murphy plays most of his family, including the main character's mother and grandmother.
• Eddie Murphy did it again when he played Rasputia in Norbit.
• In The Passion of the Christ, Rosalinda Celentano plays Satan.
• In the 1914 film The Patchwork Girl of Oz, the young boy Ojo is played by Violet MacMillan.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack the Monkey was played by a female monkey named Crystal.
• Rogan from Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is played by actress Yukari Oshima, presumably because no actual man was pretty enough.
• Scary Movie has Creepy Gym Coach Ms. Mann, who is a huge muscular man posing as a woman and is clearly attracted to his female students. His balls are even shown hanging out of his shorts in order to remove any doubt. "He" was portrayed by Jayne Trcka, a female bodybuilder.
• Alastair Sim as Miss Millicent Fritton in the original St. Trinian's series. Rupert Everett as Miss Camilla Fritton in the remake.
• Star Wars:
  • The male alien Greedo was played by several actors, one of whom is the female Maria De Aragon.
  • In the original cut of The Empire Strikes Back Emperor Palpatine was portrayed by actress Marjorie Eaton but voiced by the actor Clive Revill, but this was averted in the 2004 rerelease with Ian McDiarmid completely portraying him.
  • Yaddle, the female Jedi who is from the same alien race as Yoda seen in The Phantom Menace, was puppeteered by Phil Eason.
  • Even Piell, the male Lannik Jedi who appeared in Attack of the Clones, was played by actress Michaela Cottrell.
  • The infant Luke and Leia seen in Revenge of the Sith were actually played by the same baby, Aidan Barton, making Leia an example of this.
• The toddler son of the protagonist in The Toll of the Sea was played by a girl.
• In the Cult Classic film Trouble in Mind, (male) baby Spike was played by (female) Caitlin Ferguson.
• The Wizard of Oz: Since the 1980s, the official promotional performer for the Wicked Witch of the West has been Kurt Raymond, who, when he first got the role, was auditioning for the role of the Scarecrow. It certainly helps him that under all that makeup he looks so much like Margaret Hamilton, her own son mistook him for her when he performed at a 70th anniversary gala for the film in 2009.
• In The Year of Living Dangerously, actress Linda Hunt plays a male photographer named Billy Kwan. This was a "body type" example; the character is a dwarf, which limited the pool of available candidates to the point that the director decided to go for the best actor regardless of sex or ethnicity. She won an Oscar for it.
• In Monkey Man, aside from trans actresses Pehan Abdul, Reva Marchellin and Dayangku Zyana, most of the hijra warriors are played by male stuntmen. Male actors Vipin Sharma and Fahad Scale play featured hijras Alpha and Pooja.

Live-Action TV

• A Taiwanese game show modelled after Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? gets slightly derailed when one of the schoolboys goes into an extended rant about being cast as Cinderella for a school play. It made it into broadcast.
• 30 Rock also used this with Margaret Cho's recurring role as Kim Jong-il in Seasons 5 and 6.
• Like other sketch shows, All That featured a handful of these, most prominently Katrina Johnson as Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot.
• The classic Israeli children television show At Fistuk’s featured a puppet named Rega‘ that turned into a boy... played by an adult woman. It’s as jarring as it sounds, even for preschoolers.
• Baskets has Christine Baskets, mother of the titular character played by Louie Anderson.
• A Bit of Fry and Laurie engaged in this on occasion; the "man playing a woman" was occasionally part of the joke, but only to the extent that Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry make for absolutely ridiculous women.
• The Canadian sketch comedy series Codco, although a mixed-gender troupe, saw all of its actors sometimes play cross-gender roles. The show's most famous bit involved Canadian television journalist Barbara Frum, as played by Greg Malone in drag. One recurring sketch, "The Byrd Family", actually featured all five actors simultaneously playing across gender. This was continued to a lesser extent on the spinoff This Hour Has 22 Minutes, with Cathy Jones appearing as Joe Crow, Mary Walsh appearing as Dakey Dunn, and both playing two of the Quinlan Quints. (Rick Mercer and Greg Thomey did not cross-dress, although later cast addition Gavin Crawford did celebrity impersonations including Canadian journalist and commentator Chantal Hébert.) As with The Kids in the Hall, however, the crossdressing was never the joke in and of itself.
• In Devs, Cailee Spaeny plays Lyndon and could easily pass as an adolescent boy. According to Alex Garland, a female actor was chosen to give the character a more youthful appearance without requiring an underage actor. Puzzlingly, the character's age is given as 19 in the dialogue of a late episode.
• Doctor Who occasionally has female or male aliens and robots played by actors of the opposite gender, but they're often in full-body suits, making it easier to get away with. Examples include Daz Parker as the Wooden Cyberman in "The Time of The Doctor", and Paul Kasey and Alan Ruscoe as the Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall androids in "Bad Wolf".
• In the Enemy at the Door episode "The Jerrybag", baby Erich is played by a female infant.
• Israeli satire show Eretz Nehederet had Tal Friedmann, a man, play women regularly, to the point that Orna Banay, one of the two actresses on that show left in frustration over him getting all the good roles for women. Ironically, Banay rose to fame partially by playing a man and briefly playing one on Eretz Nehederet herself.
• French and Saunders has a gender-flipped example of the all-male comedy troupes; they do have two male comics on hand if required, but obviously the title duo has to play the main characters, even if they're doing a parody of The Phantom Menace.
• Friends had Chandler's father (who is either a transvestite or is transgender; the show was never clear) played by Kathleen Turner.
• Butch Lesbian "Walter" from German series Hinter Gittern - der Frauenknast (Behind bars - the women's prison) has a twin brother Andreas, played by the same actress, who's apparently indistinguishable from her without his beard. Which they used in one episode to change roles, allowing her to escape and him to get closer to several female prisoners.
• The Kids in the Hall: As an all-male troupe, the cast members typically play all significant major female roles themselves, though they do it as realistically as possible to let the humor come from the situations.
• Lassie was usually played by a male dog, as the males of "her" breed have a longer, more luxurious "summer coat" than the females.
• And The League of Gentlemen also does this, for the same reasons as The Kids in the Hall, although men-playing-women was never part of the joke. (Except with Barbara, of course.)
• Many a woman in Little Britain is portrayed by the two male lead actors. Since most of them are supposed to be rather... unique in appearance it's not much of a stretch.
• In Monkey, the 1978 TV series adaptation of Journey to the West, the role of Tripitaka was played by Masako Natsume, although shaving her head to fit the role of a young monk helped her look the part a bit more, as Tripiaka/Sanzo was often portrayed as a beautiful young man. This made her the only female actress in the main cast, although whenever Buddha appeared he adopted an explicitly female form (commented on by Monkey) played by Mieko Takamine.
• Happened all the time in Monty Python's Flying Circus, because the troupe was all male, but also played for comedy. They did have access to real actresses, such as Carol Cleveland, when they needed to have an actual woman (though one sketch had Cleveland playing a male explorer, and at least twice, Cleveland also portrayed a male juror or barrister, and occasionally a role you'd expect to be a Pepperpot was played by an actual older woman, the most notable example being the second appearance of the Spanish Inquisition where they attempt to interrogate an old lady as a heretic using such torture tools as cushions and a comfy chair).
• The Ambiguously Gay title character of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 short Mr. B Natural was played by actress Betty Luster, and clearly so, leading Tom and Crow to debate the character's actual gender.
• The Live-Action Adaptation of Negima! Magister Negi Magi infamously cast a ten-year-old girl as Negi. This was the least of its problems.
• Another Israeli satire show, Nikuy Rosh, did this on occasion, featuring both men playing women and women playing men.
• In Prisoner: Cell Block H, Chrissie Latham's daughter Elizabeth is played by a baby boy. Lorelei Wilkinson's daughter Zoe was played by young twin boys, one of which refused to let the producers put him in a dress.
• Saturday Night Live, of course, is a comedy troupe with both men and women. There have been both male cast members playing female characters (such as Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" character) and female cast members playing male characters (such as Rachel Dratch playing Harry Potter and Amy Poehler playing Kim Jong-Il, and Melissa McCarthy's turn as Sean Spicer).
• She-Hulk: Attorney at Law features an Imagine Spot imitating the opening of the 1970s Hulk show, with Shulkie being a male bodybuilder in a wig and a dress (and green paint).
• In Sh15uya, protagonist Tsuyoshi is played by actress Saya Yuki.
• Downplayed in Spanish Archer. Ruth Madoc occasionally substitutes for Rhodri Williams when he's ill and can't play the Archer.
• The Talosians in the first Star Trek pilot were played by women but had male voices. This has been repeated in a few of the spin-offs as well.
• Super Sentai and Power Rangers usually cast male stunt actors portraying the female heroes while in costume, even without taking into account the times when She's a Man in Japan.
  • Motokuni Nakagawa has even earned the nickname of "Mr. Pink" for being in the costume for Pink Racer, Ginga Pink, Go Pink, Time Pink, and Bouken Pink.
  • Easily the longest-running of these is Yūichi Hachisuka, who's played three male rangers as well as females from Change Phoenix to Yellow Buster!
  • The practice was somewhat phased out in modern Sentais, with female stunt actors playing the morphed heroes, though several of these actors would continue to don the suits of female villain roles, with Hachisuka in particular donning the costumes for Mele (armored form), Joyful Knight Candelilla and Madame Noir, while Nakagawa portrayed Metal Alice of the Agent.
  • Naoko Kamio is frequently cast as male rangers or non-human characters, sometimes as a substitute performer; among her credits are Koguma Skyblue, Datas and Ginis.
• In the shows made by Tim & Eric, Tim plays Jan Skylar of the Married News Team while Eric plays Carol in the "Carol and Mr. Henderson" sketches.
• In The Toy Castle, Sophia Constantini, a female dancer, is the suit actor for Frederick Frog, who is male.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway? has the disadvantage of not even being able to rely on costumes. Colin usually gets stuck playing the woman.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In "The Gang Solves the North Korea Crisis", a female actress plays the owner of a neighboring bar who looks exactly like Kim Jong-Il, lampooning Kim's somewhat effeminate appearance. The gang directly asks him if he's a man or a woman.
• Occasionally, in her specials on British royalty, Lucy Worsley would reenact a historical event or general life of the period in the role of the King of England / Britain at the time. Notable portrayals of hers include King Charles II and King Edward VIII in Tales from the Royal Wardrobe and King Henry VIII in 12 Days of Tudor Christmas. She also played an Elizabethan palace guard in one scene of an episode of Royal Myths and Secrets focusing on Queen Elizabeth I.
• The Twilight Zone: In "Gramma", Georgie's grandmother is played by Frederick Long.
• The main characters of Home Movie: The Princess Bride, most of whom are portrayed by multiple actors, all have at least a few actors among them each who are of a different gender than the original character, with varying levels of effort to make them seem like the character's gender. Of course, this is solely Played for Laughs.
• In the 5th episode of Chucky, the young 20-something Charles Lee Ray is played by Fiona Dourif, the daughter of Brad Dourif because she resembled him in his younger days, she had makeup applied to make her look more masculine, wore baggy clothes to cover her breasts, and her father dubbed over her voice.

Music

• An almost Omnipresent Trope in many branches of Folk Music is to not alter the lyrics of traditional songs to fit the sex of the person singing them. This often leads to female vocalists singing from a male perspective and vice versa. Some non-traditional folk songs have kept with this tradition, such as "North Country Blues" by Bob Dylan.
  • Similarly, it is a fairly recent development (early 20th century) for singers of art songs to restrict themselves primarily to songs the lyrics of which reflect their gender. For example, in the late 1800s it was very common for baritones as well as mezzo-sopranos to sing selections from or the entire cycle "Frauenliebe und -leben" ("Women's love and life"), in which the singer represents a woman from her young adult years through marriage, childbirth, and the death of her husband.
• Positive K voiced both the Hopeless Suitor and (thanks to pitch-shifting software) the target of his misguided affections in "I Got A Man."
• Grace of Grace & Tony sings from the perspective of male serial killer William Hare in "Invitation to an Autopsy."
• In the video for van Canto's "Badaboom", female singer Inga Scharf plays the role of Ozzy Osbourne in two brief scenes.
• George Frederic Handel's oratorio Solomon has the part of King Solomon written as a female voice, specifically an alto part originally written for one of Handel's favourite mezzo-sopranos, Caterina Galli. In theory, a male counter-tenor might be able to sing it, but it's really a woman's role.
• Australian singer Tones and I plays an old man for the music video of her single "Dance Monkey".
• The Dead Milkmen had bassist Dave Blood portray a woman in both of the official music videos released from the album Beelzebubba - a waitress in "Punk Rock Girl" and a go-go dancer in "You'll Dance To Anything". The Running Gag made a slight return later in the music video for "The Secret Of Life": Dave briefly plays a feminine-presenting Human Alien.

Puppet Shows

• Extremely common in Muppet productions. Many female characters on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show are performed and voiced by male puppeteers, initially due to a lack of female puppeteers and later due to the Grandfather Clause. Most notably, Miss Piggy, who was voiced by male puppeteer Frank Oz... though Oz did such a convincing feminine voice that you probably never even noticed.(To prove how great a voice actor he is, Frank Oz was also none other than Yoda). Also pops up in Fraggle Rock, another Jim Henson production, most notably with the character of Marjory the Trash Heap, who is voiced by veteran Muppet performer Jerry Nelson, who does an intentionally unconvincing female voice, and, presumably unintentionally, made the character sound exactly like a Jewish Mother.
• Along with his other (male) dummies, Edgar Bergen also performed the Old Maid character Effie Klinker.

Theatre General

• Ancient Greek plays were performed entirely by men. Indeed, whether women were allowed to even watch plays is a matter of debate.
• All traditional Japanese Kabuki Theatre, due to a 1629 ban on female actors. This effectively created an entire industry of Gender Bender "actresses" (see The Other Wiki on onnagatta). Note that when Kabuki first appeared in the early 1600s it was female only, and had females playing male roles. Either way, it's an example.
• Noh theater used male actors in all roles from the beginning. A few females have begun to act in Noh in later years, but even today it's most common to find an all-male cast.
• It is quite common in so-called "adapted live stage tours" for male characters of short stature (e.g. Elmo) to be suit-acted by women. The same applies for costumed characters at amusement parks and family entertainment centers.
• Elizabethan England prohibited women from acting in stage productions, so female roles were typically played by boys. This is apparently why William Shakespeare often wrote crossdressing into his plays, exploiting the meta-irony of boys playing women who disguise themselves as men.
• Numerous ballet productions in 19th-century Europe had the male roles be played by crossdressing women, for two reasons: firstly, due to changing ideas about gender, ballet was viewed as being too feminine for men to participate in, leading to a shortage of male dancers, and secondly, the male audience-members of the time really dug the Girl on Girl Is Hot. Contrariwise, Mother Ginger in The Nutcracker and Widow Simone in La Fille Mal Gardee are traditionally danced by men.
• The Japanese musical theatre troupe Takarazuka Revue is an all-female troupe, and inevitably they play a lot of male characters (James Bond was performed by a woman for the first time in 2023 with their version of Casino Royale). It's usual particular cast members who get the male roles, and they tend to get a large fan following usually mostly consisting of straight women.
• In pantomime any middle-aged or older woman (the "pantomime dame") will be played by a man in drag. In addition, the young male hero (the "principal boy") is traditionally played by a woman although it's not that uncommon for them to be played by a male instead.
• In some Chinese traditional opera troupes, there are no actresses, so all of the female roles are played by men. (Farewell My Concubine is the story of such a cross-dressing actor.)
• In contemporary times, this has become common in school plays because girls tend to audition in (sometimes significantly) greater numbers than boys, but the majority of plays available still have more male than female characters. It's also used in some high school productions that include young boy characters, particularly musicals because the vocal range for these characters may be more suited to a girl than to a pubescent boy.
• 90% of Gioachino Rossini's heroic leads are trouser roles for contralto or mezzo-soprano: Tancredi in Tancredi, Falliero in Bianca e Falliero, Malcolm in La donna del lago, Arsace in Semiramide. Even his Othello was at one point sung by Maria Malibran.
• Some Russian composers were fond of this as well: Vanya and Ratmir in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Lyudmila; the shepherd Lel in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden, the minstrel Nezhata in Sadko, the Page in The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.

Theatre Specific

• The Duchess in the Royal Ballet's 2011 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is played by a man.
• In American Idiot, one of the people that temporarily played St. Jimmy while Billie Joe Armstrong was away was Melissa Etheridge, whose performance was noted for being seductive and highlighting the androgynous nature of the character. Casting a woman as this role, which had previously been played by two men, also made sense, given the fact that St. Jimmy is actually an illusion of Johnny's psyche, and therefore doesn't technically have an actual gender.
• In Avenue Q, Gary Coleman is usually played by a woman because it is difficult to find a small enough man with a high enough voice. Also, puppet characters may sometimes be performed by a human of the opposite gender as the person who performs a puppet isn't necessarily the one providing the voice, as each puppeteer voices at least two puppets. The trope also comes into effect (sort of) with puppets who are performed by more than one person. For example, Nicky is, most of the time, performed by a male (who provides the voice, controls the head and left hand) and a female (who controls the right hand).
• In Barrel Rolls and Broken Dreams, Fox is played by a female, thus making the subplot where Slippy does not know that he is a male more amusing.
• In Marxiano Productions's Bohemia, the famously effeminate Fryderyk Chopin has always been played by a woman, usually company co-founder Opal Peachey.
• In the televised CBeebies 2010 panto, the old woman Twanky is played by a male and the young boy Aladdin by a female. Both fairly traditional, but it does mean that the grownups get to watch the Les Yay between Aladdin and Jasmine.
• Some productions of Cabaret have a butch actress play Max.
• In stage versions of Chicago, the character of Mary Sunshine is usually played by a man in drag, whose gender is revealed as a plot surprise. The movie cast a woman in the part, probably because there was no way to keep the twist from being obvious. (This was also not the case in the original non-musical play.)
• In many productions of A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim is cast as a trouser role. The Spirit of Christmas Past was originally depicted as Ambiguous Gender but is often portrayed as or at least played by a woman. Occasionally, even Christmas Present or Marley are cross-cast or gender-flipped.
• Cirque du Soleil examples:
  • In KÀ, the twin protagonists are opposite-sex fraternal twins, but identical female twins are cast in the roles.
  • The Beatles LOVE casts a man as Her Majesty to give her a caricatured appearance.
• Caryl Churchill's play Cloud Nine uses cross-gender (and cross-ethnic) casting in the first act, to emphasize the disconnect between the character's feelings and their outer show, particularly in Act I.
  • Betty, a high-strung, cuckolded, lady of the house, is deliberately played like an over-the-top man in drag a la Monty Python to show the absurdity of Victorian gender roles. In the second act, she's played straight by a woman and pretty much realized she'd been forced to play a caricature most of her life. Conversely, Betty's son Edward is played by a woman as a child in Act I, but by a man in Act II. (The usual practice is to have the actors switch off between acts, so the actor for Betty in Act I will be Edward in Act II and vice-versa.)
  • The sole Act 2 example involves Cathy (a little girl) played by a grown man, usually the same man who played the patriarch Clive in the first act. It's more than just Rule of Funny, though, as it also serves as a metaphor for colonialism, which is a major theme of the show: Cathy is immature and out of control, and because she is actually a full-grown man, her misbehaviour is more of a threat than her identity suggests.
• Charlotte Cushman became known for playing Romeo, with the role of Juliet in at least one production being played by her sister.
• Octavian of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier is a young man, who at one point disguises himself as a woman; his part is played by female singers.
• In Die Fledermaus, the part of Prince Orlofsky is almost always played by a woman.
• Subverted by Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson's play Epicoene. The title character is played by a boy but presented as a woman for the whole play- until the characters learn otherwise. That is, Epicoene in the world of the play really is a boy, but only the protagonist knows this until the end. Awkwardness ensues.
• Finding Nemo: The Musical has consistently cast women in the title role, a given since the Disney parks don't cast child actors.
• Greater Tuna has usually two males play all the roles.
• In Hairspray, Edna is always played by a man, the part having been originated by the 300-pound drag queen Divine. Community productions routinely cast local drag queens (plus-sized, of course) to play the part. The Musical helps enforce this by writing Edna's song parts in the baritone range.
• The Witch in Hansel and Gretel (1893) is often played by a tenor in drag, mainly for the laughs. It was originally a mezzo-soprano role. Hansel is a typical trouser role.
• In Hornsmoke: A Horse Opera by Peter Schickele, Cornetta Bone, the only female role, is expected to be performed by a male cornet player, which explains the low range of the performer's brief (and out-of-character) vocal part.
• The Hunter × Hunter stage musicals are especially notable for casting the original voice actors for Gon, Killua, and Kurapika (all of whom are female) in their respective roles.
• Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
• Some, but not all, modern productions of The Importance of Being Earnest cast a man as Lady Bracknell.
• Several later productions of King Lear have had the Fool played by an actress, sometimes using a puppet.
• In L'Aiglon, by Edmond Rostand, the titular role (Napoléon Bonaparte's 20-year-old son) was created in 1900 by Sarah Bernhardt. Doubles as Dawson Casting since she was in her mid-fifties.
• Isolier in Le Comte Ory. Isolier is the Count's romantic rival and is played by a mezzo.
• The 1998 Encores! production of Li'l Abner had Marryin' Sam played by actress Lea DeLaria.
• Traditionally, Mrs. Luce in Little Shop of Horrors is played by the actor who played Orin, who also plays many other minor roles.
• Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.
  • And a great deal of other pages and young boys: Tebaldo in Don Carlo, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Smeton in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Siebel in Faust, Stefano in Romeo et Juliette, Urbain in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, etc.
• Miss Trunchbull in Matilda is traditionally played by a male, and thus has a baritone-range voice. Averted in the film adaptation, which casts Emma Thompson in the role.
• A German production of The Mikado cast actress Ilka Palmay, who would eventually originate the role of Julia in Gilbert and Sullivan's final operetta, The Grand Duke, as the male Nanki-Poo.
• Kim's son Tam in Miss Saigon has been played by both boys and girls, as the primary requirements for the role are 1) look Asian, 2) be short enough to pass for two years old, and 3) do what the director tells you to.
• Cross-casting is a contractual obligation in The Mystery of Irma Vep. There are four male characters, four female characters, and two actors who each portray two female characters and two male characters. The licensing contract requires two male actors or two female actors.
• In the 2015 Naruto stage musical Live Spectacle Naruto, Haku, who is known for his androgynous appearance, is played by actress Miho Imamura and Orochimaru, who is known for his genderfluid appearance, is played by Takarazuka Revue otokoyaku actress Hiro Yūmi.
• It is very common for the title character in The Nutcracker to be played by a woman (a notable example being the 1989 Bolshoi recording, in which the role was danced by Marisa Okothnikova). Because, ya know, the nutcracker jokes weren't easy enough already. Mother Ginger is often played by a man in drag.
• In the Kabuki adaptation of One Piece titled Super Kabuki II: One Piece and staying true to tradition, all of the female characters (Hancock, Nami, Sandersonia, Elder Nyon, Robin, Marigold and Tsuru) are played by male actors, with Luffy's actor Ennosuke Ichikawa the only one to also play a female character in this adaptation.
• Tamamo-no-Mae, a man in Onmyoji, is played by a former Takarazuka Revue otokoyaku in the musical adaptation. It helps that he already is Camp Straight, can transform into a woman, and is voiced by a woman in the game to begin with.
• In Orfeo ed Euridice, Cupid, a male god in mythology, is traditionally sung soprano by women. Orpheus himself tends to be portrayed this way as well.
• Prince Kaguya: The male Shouta Aoi plays Aoi, the birth mother of Kaguya, in addition to Kaguya and himself.
• The character of Peter Pan is traditionally played by an actress, to the point that the character is sometimes jokingly referred to as Broadway's most famous drag king. The reasoning behind this has to do with child labor laws and the belief that an adult actor can carry the role better. But casting a grown man to play the part of a boy who never grew up would stretch Willing Suspension of Disbelief; even if he's physically small-framed and babyfaced, the illusion would be shattered the moment he opened his mouth. Easier to pass off a petite actress for the part. Both the original play and 1954 musical follow this tradition. The only male actor to have played Peter Pan on Broadway is Jack Noseworthy, who understudied the role as part of Jerome Robbins' Broadway.
  • Curiously enough, J. M. Barrie himself wanted the role of Captain Hook to be played by the same actor as Mrs. Darling, rather than Mr. Darling.
  • Peter Pan is played by actress Kacey Ainsworth in the Children's Party at the Palace live event.
• In W.S. Gilbert’s ‘’The Princess,’’ the basis of his later ‘’Princess Ida’’, the roles of Prince Hilarion, Cyril and Florian disguise themselves as women and were played by actresses. Ida’s three brothers, manly as they are, were also played by women. The later Savoy Opera averted this trope.
• The part of the bearded Grande Dame Baba the Turk in The Rake's Progress was once played by John Ferrante.
• The revival of The Rocky Horror Show featured actress Lea De Laria as both Eddie and Dr. Scott - two male roles.
• Intiman Theatre's 2012 Setting Update of Romeo and Juliet had three of the male roles played by women, notably Sampson (Tsige "Ziggy" Tafesse), the Prince (Hannah V. Franklin), and the apothecary merchant (also Tsige Tafesse). Likewise, the 2019 ACT Theatre production double-cast the Prince (Amy Thone, who also played Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley and Old Joe in the aforementioned A Christmas Carol) and Friar John (Lindsay Evans) with the Nurse and Lady Capulet, respectively.
• Visual Kei band Disacode frontwoman Akira played Uesugi Kenshin in the stage show adaptation of Sengoku Basara.
• The Cat in the Hat in Seussical has often been played by female performers, going back as far as Andrea Martin (of SCTV fame) in the Toronto workshop; Rosie O'Donnell and Cathy Rigby both stepped into the role during the unsuccessful Broadway run.
• Sera Myu has many male characters played by women (Prince Demand, Blue Saphir, Hawk's Eye, Fish's Eye, Jadeite, Kunzite). The fact that Sailor Moon Naoko Takeuchi was a fan of Takarazuka Revue (and used it for inspiration for Sailors Uranus and Neptune) and many actresses were alums of the Revue probably helped as well.
  • Starting from the 2013 Sera Myu revival, this seems to be established: The Nelke musicals (from La Reconquista to Le Mouvement Final), the Nogizaka48 musical, The Super Live, and Princess Kaguya's Lover all have all-women casts, with at least one former Takarasienne. The Super Live also features the franchise's first transgender actress, Reo Sanada, as Kunzite.
• To mark the release of The Rise of Skywalker in 2019 and as a nod to Star Wars' popularity in Japan, Disney teamed up with the Ichikawa family to do a Kabuki play retelling of the franchise's first two installments of the sequel trilogy titled Kairennosuke and the Three Shining Swords with Leia, Rey and Admiral Holdo (renamed Reian, Reino and Amiri, respectively for this) played by male actors. It even helps the fact that lead actor Ebizo (now Danjuro XIII) Ichikawa is a big fan of the franchise.
• Some productions of The Sleeping Beauty will have Carabosse danced by a male performer, including the 1982 Kirov production. Another production had the role danced by none other than Frederick Ashton.
• Team Starkid loves this trope, but it's never used for any serious reason.
  • Draco Malfoy in A Very Potter Musical, played by Lauren Lopez.
  • Dolores Umbridge in the sequel, is played by Joe Walker. Dean is another crosscast role, played by the person who played Bellatrix in the first musical.
  • Crabbe in both musicals—which gets lampshaded.
  Goyle: We hate nerds!
  Crabbe: And girls!
  • Holy Musical B@man! has Lauren Lopez playing one of these roles again, this time as Commissioner Gordon and minor villains Calendar Man and Evil King Arthur. Meredith Stepien also plays the Riddler. Numerous roles are also crosscast in the last scene when the whole Justice League joins in with the last musical number.
• In This Is Halloween, a 2019 Seattle-based cabaret musical of The Nightmare Before Christmas, actress Jasmine Sim played Oogie Boogie.
• In the National Theatre's 2014 production of Treasure Island, the comic relief role of Israel Hands, a male pirate, was played by female clown Angela de Castro.
• Book-It Repertory Theatre's 2020 production of The Turn of the Screw featured an all-female cast.
• In Twilight: Los Angeles, all of the roles are played by Anna Deveare Smith.
• Westeros: An American Musical:
  • Since the play is by an amateur troupe in which nobody has dwarfism, Tyrion's role was given to one of the shorter women.
  • Another woman plays Joffrey, Jon Snow, the shadow-baby (a canonically male being), and Edric Storm.
• Beloved english children's book character Noddy is traditonally voiced by females in numerous adaptations (such as audio books and TV shows). This extends to the the 1994 stage production "Noddy Live" that was performed at "Festival Theater" in Edinburgh, Scotland where Noddy is played by Karen Briffett. The exception is Make Way For Noddy and Noddy, Toyland Detective (except France) where the character's voiced by young boys.

Theme Parks

• Until around 1970, Peter Pan was played by young women at Disney Land and Disney World.

Video Games

• Voice and motion-capture for Fallout 4's version of perennial companion male dog Dogmeat was provided by River, a female German Shepard. It's not really noticeable in-game since dogs aren't very sexually dimorphic.
• Roundabout uses this as part of its surreal comedy and low-budget feel of the cutscenes. Protagonist Georgio is played by a woman, but the game treats him as male in-universe.
• During dream sequences in Disco Elysium, your male character has conversations with the voices of his unconscious brain. His Limbic System is female, and played in a wheedling Creepy High-Pitched Voice by the same male actor who plays the other brain voices, reflecting that she may well be your feminine side but she's still just part of you.
• In Thy Dungeonman 3, the Hag is portrayed by Ryan Sterritt.

Web Videos

• The Call of Warr:
  • Glintz-Terry is a male soldier, played by the female Cricket Arrison.
  • "Prisoner Sarah" is voiced by the callers, and so despite their female name, they can be played by a male at any time.
• Critical Role: In the second campaign, Sam Riegel plays Nott the Brave, a female goblin. There are occasional slipups at the table, such as the other characters accidentally referring to Nott as "he", or Nott suggesting that "the ladies" go do something and forgetting that she's a lady too.
• Drunk History's episode on Alexander Hamilton, narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda, had the roles of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr played by Alia Shawkat and Aubrey Plaza. Both are also non-white, as an extension of Miranda's Hamilton where the cast is non-white except for King George III.
• Max Landis' Wrestling Isn't Wrestling retells the first 20 years of Triple H's WWE career with a predominantly-female cast, headed by Chloe Dykstra as Triple H. Male wrestlers like Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and the Undertaker are played by women, and the only featured female wrestler, Chyna, is played by a man (Sam Witwer). All other parts are played by their sex.
• Star Wars Uncut: Sometimes Luke, Han, Vader, and others are female, and sometimes Leia is a guy.

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