— LeVar Burton, Dragon*Con 2010, when asked about this trope
You recognize the character immediately as being right off the Characters list. He hasn't said anything yet, but you know him because he is an example of
typecasting. There are a myriad of ways to be typecast, and it's the kiss of death for an actor (at least in their eyes). Whereas stage actors are shuffled around quite a bit, allowing them to play all sorts of roles, it's a different story with movies and television.
This is not entirely the fault of casting directors, either. When Ed O'Neill left Married... with Children to spread his wings as a dramatic actor, audiences laughed the instant he appeared onscreen in The Spanish Prisoner. An extreme example of this is I Am Not Spock (and also I Am Not Leonard Nimoy).
Genre television has a reputation for pigeonholing actors. Doctor Who has traditionally had a "Three-Year Rule" of actors exiting the lead role to avoid being typecast in the future. This tradition began with Patrick Troughton, who eventually gave up and embraced the fact that he would always be The Doctor.
Meta Casting is playing off this Type Casting to push it into another realm of familiarity.
When lampshaded in the work itself, this becomes Adam Westing. When it happen with voice actors, it's called Pigeonholed Voice Actor.
The opposite is, naturally enough, Playing Against Type (subtropes of which include Tom Hanks Syndrome, Leslie Nielsen Syndrome and Playing With Character Type).
Have a foreign guy in the script? Armand Assante is your man. No matter which country the character is from, Assante will bring foreignness to the role.
Christian Bale is sort of a live action Peter Cullen, as he is typecast as the Bad Ass, realistic, fanboy-pleasing character.
Except for The Machinist and The Fighter, in both he is a thin, creepy and for lack of a better term, freak no matter how you look at it.
His earlier roles were much more varied. For example, he played an awkward, sensitive gay guy in Velvet Goldmine.
Tobin Bell is becoming a career villain very quickly, and is now almost universally known as Jigsaw. Even in a bit part on an episode of Seinfeld, he manages to be some sort of antagonist.
Michael Biehn gets a lot of roles as intense military types — a cadet in The Lords of Discipline, a resistance fighter in The Terminator, a Colonial Marine in Aliens, the player avatar in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, and a Navy SEAL in no less than 3 films — Navy SEALS, The Abyss and The Rock.
Jack Black's been known for playing either a hyperactive maniac Large Ham role or a slob. Except in The Holiday.
BRIAN BLESSED is always cast is big, boisterous characters who shout a lot.
The general rule of thumb is that if the film is in a historical, medieval or fantasy setting he'll play one of the good guys... who dies. If its set in modern times he'll generally play one of the bad guys... and usually die.
Charles Bronson was the ultimate badass. Apparently, this extended to his offscreen life, too: he was a coal miner at the age of 10.
In The Magnificent Seven, Bronson splits wood onscreen, with an axe and everything. Not only is this physically demanding, requiring good coordination, it's so dangerous that no insurance company is likely to ever let a name star do that again.
Steve Buscemi as the paranoid, fast-talking, nervy rodenty guy who is either a snarky, Jerk Ass, loserish protagonist or a sympathetic, loserish scumbag of a villain / Anti-Villain. Sometimes voice-acts actual rodents. He has a low chance of surviving until the end of a movie.
Or as the guy who gets killed in some horrible way. See also: Leto, Jared
Or as the eccentricly weird guy that often gets injured in Adam Sandler movies.
Gary Busey has made a career out of playing bad guys with various levels of mental derangement - from mild sociopathy to full-on Ax Crazy. Busey admits that some of this is due to how he would act when the cameras weren't rolling.
While not quite as pigeonholed, Gary's son Jake Busey, who looks rather similar to his dad, also gets his fair share of the kinds of roles his dad gets (for example, in Contact, The Frighteners, and Tomcats.)
James "Jimmy" Cagney, far down on the list, but among the first and most severe cases of typecasting in early Hollywood. Since smashing a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face in The Public Enemy (1931), he will be forever known as the hardass gangster, complete with his own Beam Me Up, Scotty!, "You dirty rat..." Cagney started his career as a "hoofer" or dancer in stage musicals, was a teetotaler, spoke fluent yiddish (though a gentile), and was no slouch at judo (put to great use in Blood on the Sun (1945), with one of the most brutal fights ever filmed). Yet none of this erased the tough guy persona he was famous for, even after winning an Oscar for the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Part of the problem was that Cagney couldn't flash a smile that didn't imply godless bloodlust.
Bruce Willis tends to play tough guys usually some sort of law enforcement, government agent, soldier or a hitman.
Michael Caine turned down the role of James Bond because he felt he'd be typecast as a spy.
Bruce Campbell has played so many jerks spouting one-liners that most fans don't know what to think when he tries something new.
A large number of Gary Chalk's live action roles has him working for the government. These includes jobs in politics, S.H.I.E.L.D., military and most frequently, a police officer.
Jackie Chan was typecast as a "nice guy" for decades, partly because Jackie aspired to be a positive role model for children. Until 2006's "Rob B Hood", Jackie hadn't played a negative character in over 30 years.
Ironically, he eventually tried to avoid the karate typecast by playing the Everyman who gains the ability to do awesome karate moves. Unfortunately, Jackie Chan becoming Jackie Chan wasn't that much of a movie.
Roy Cheung plays a lot of psychotic Triad gangsters and other villains in Hong Kong movies, to the point that when he played a Shaolin monk in Infernal Affairs, it was seen as Playing Against Type.
Gary Coleman as the wisecracking black kid. See also Adam Westing.
Jeffrey Combs has made a career out of playing psychopaths and Star Trek characters.
The popularity of Steptoe And Son ruined the careers of its stars, Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell. Corbett in particular suffered, having achieved acclaim as a Shakespearean actor before accepting his role in the show, and frequently being described as "Britain's Marlon Brando" early in his career.
Even stage actors aren't immune to this. Look at John Cullum, playing a cynical, worldwise, southerner and/or father, in Shenandoah (original cast and revival), 1776 (movie), Urinetown, and 110 in the Shade. Ironically, he initially turned down the role of Rutledge because he did not want to play a southerner.
On the other hand, he got to play a psychiatrist who falls in love with the past incarnation of a patient he regresses in the Tony-nominated musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever — but this was before taking the other roles mentioned.
Tim Curry has played at least one villain in many a cartoon. See Darkwing Duck, the cartoon adaptation of The Mask, and "The Creation" from Hanna-Barbera's video series The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible, among others. He does have a Beard of Evil.
And a guest spot on Monk as Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck. Interestingly enough, Curry was the second of three actors to play the part: Adam Arkin was the Whale in his first appearance, then Curry for one episode, and in the character's final episode, it was Ray Porter in the suit.
Vincent D'Onofrio, after Full Metal Jacket, generally plays a big, scary guy. In Men In Black, he plays a perfectly sane (wife-beating redneck) farmer who gets eaten and his skin worn by a creepy bug alien about sixty seconds into his first scene. Even on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Bobby Goren is impliedly a little off.
Rodney Dangerfield had played the same act in most movies he did the past couple of decades, with the possible darker exception of Natural Born Killers.
Anthony De Longis provides the voice for several Jerk Ass video game villains, including Mick Cutler in Resistance3 and General Sarrano in Bulletstorm.
Except for "Matilda;" he's just a sleazy scumbag in that one.
The only constant between Johnny Depp's roles is that, with the exception of Pirates of the Caribbean (being a sequel), he hasn't done the same kind of character twice. And in that strange way, audiences have come to expect him to just be that kind of offbeat character.
Frequently pairing up with Tim Burton tends to do that.
He's done plenty of quirky man-child characters, though the quirks tend to shift quite a bit from movie to movie.
Leonardo DiCaprio is an interesting example. After his Star-Making Role in Titanic, media pundits almost unanimously predicted that Leo would be another flash-in-the pan celebrity, typecast as a Bishōnenteenage heart-throb before forever vanishing from the limelight after hitting 35. Unusually, he was Genre Savvy enough to move away from pretty boy roles into something grittier and started a very fruitful creative partnership with Martin Scorsese. Ironically, this led Di Caprio to being typecast in crime and/or business dramas, Scorsese's signature genre, where he usually plays intense, morally ambiguous types. Leo's lead role in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi film Inception was seen as an attempt at broadening his acting range... right until it turned out he was playing an intense, morally ambiguous mind thief.
Vin Diesel is the tough action hero who, appropriately, has something to do with big hulking machines.
In the 1960s and 70s there was the great Anton Diffring, who became the archetypal sinister German officer. For a period during the 1960s no self-respecting WWII film was complete without an icy glare or cold and calculating remark courtesy of Herr Diffring.
Jason Dolley, a member of the Disney Channel repertory, is typecast as two different types of characters: Either an unlucky, unappreciated loser who gets the girl in the end (in his three Disney Channel original movies: Read It and Weep, Minutemen, and Hatching Pete): or a moronic, slacker musician (in his two Disney Channel sitcoms, Cory in the House and Good Luck Charlie).
He's finally due to play a moronic, slacker musician in a DCOM for a change, when the Good Luck Charlie movie is released.
Which is strange, because he started off as the sweetest guy ever, Bill in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (still a Woobie!). It seems 2 years ago, finally, he was able to play someone who wasn't evil in any way, shape or form in the Halloween 2007 remake as the Sheriff of the town, and probably the nicest guy in the movie.
(Local prostitutes are giggling while being "examined" by the doctor.)
"Doc Cochran": When you laugh, you leak piss.
His typecasting is Lampshaded in Urban Legend, where he plays a scary, stuttering gas station attendant. He runs up to a girl getting gas trying to yell something, but he Can't Spit It Out. She shakes him off and drives away in her car, assuming he was trying to attack and/or rape her. After she's out of earshot, he finally manages to shout "SOMEONE'S IN THE BACK SEAT!" Much later in the movie, he's mentioned on the news as a suspect in the murders.
He also cast himself in Unforgiven, where he plays an older version of his tough cowboy character. Clint likes to do this - and he knows what he's doing.
Now he's just known for playing "the character with the gravely voice".
Possibly the only exception is Every Which Way But Loose and its sequel Any Which Way You Can, which were off-beat comedies. Though even then his character was tough guy trucker who dabbles in bare-knuckle fighting.
On the other hand, Christopher Eccleston did get somewhat typecast over the years: either as a troubled, working-class, underdog everyman with some tragic story (Jude, Let Him Have It, Flesh and Blood, Strumpet, Revengers Tragedy, Hillsborough, The Second Coming, Heroes... even the Ninth Doctor fits this, at least stylistically), or as a mostly blockbuster-style villain (Gone in 60 Seconds, G.I. Joe, The Seeker, Elizabeth). The former because of activism and conviction; the latter to be able to take a badly paying theatre role once in a while. Still, when The Agony Booth wrote about his role in the admittedly awful The Seeker "You're Christopher Eccleston. You're practically synonymous with having a charming and likeable screen presence. There is absolutely nothing scary about you.", the reviewer clearly had never seen 28 Days Later, Shallow Graveor his Jago in Othello.
Sam Elliott, please pick up the white courtesy phone. A movie needs a wise, grizzled cowboy. Parodied with his role in The Big Lebowski.
Ermey plays a very racist police officer in the movie Life.
R. Lee Ermey was a Drill Sergeant Nasty during the Vietnam war. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is only a slight exaggeration of the way he, and most other drill sergeants, actually behaved at that time. Modern drill instructors are much less over-the-top than back then.
Ermey has played an evangelist at least twice: once in Fletch Lives, and again in an episode of The X-Files.
Name a Dennis Farina role that wasn't a cop or a mobster. We're waiting. (Justified in that, as an 18-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, Farina knows what he's doing in those roles.)
He played a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. Granted, it was a very brief role, and wasn't particularly different from his cop roles.
Kicking And Screaming also doesn't quite count. He was a meek but otherwise well-adjusted man with father issues. Of course, those father issues caused him to go both "Idiotic Manchild" and "Arrogant Buffoon" over the course of the movie, getting way too invested in peewee soccer for the sake of one-upping his old man.
If your film needs a Jerk Ass villain, Ralph Fiennes is your man. He's either that or an introverted, brooding hero. Or an introverted, brooding villain, like he was in Red Dragon.
Before his recent Oscar nominatedrolesColin Firth every role the poor guy got since Pride and Prejudice has just been a role saying "hey look, this guy was Mr Darcy! Look at him be Mr. Darcy!" Bridget Jones turned this up to eleven, by actually basing his character on Mr. Darcy. In universe, Bridget Jones is a fan of Colin Firth and of his portrayal of Mr Darcy.
A cartoon titled "Rare Movies Festival" had on its programming for one of the days: "Harrison Ford movies where he doesn't run".
Guillermo Francella always does comedies, and he's always either the goofy lovable horndog, the irresponsible parent who has a change of heart at the end of the movie, or both.
He has done a couple more serious roles lately (even losing his signature mustache), but even then his characters are always fans of Racing Club of Avellaneda, just like he is in real life.
Has Martin Freeman ever played a major role in which he isn't playing a slightly grumpy, plain, occasionally humorous everyman character? It's all he ever seems to be cast as.
In Wild Target he played a suave assassin with frighteningly white teeth. Bit of a break from tradition.
The Hobbit may or may not change this. The above character traits kind of fit Bilbo as well, though.
Stephen Fry is often described to have been typecast as Stephen Fry, the charmingly quintessential Englishman who is probably smarter than you but too polite to say so.
Zach Galifianakis always tends to play the Psychopathic Manchild/creepy weirdo, more often or not with a large beard.
He somewhat breaks this type in his role as Ray on Bored To Death, as he often plays the snarky voice of reason to the bumbling main character. He does occasionally show poor judgement and a bit of emotional immaturity though, leaning back into his wheelhouse a little and handing off the Sanity Ball to Jonathan.
John Goodman is always the big manly bear with No Indoor Voice.
Hugh Grant is the dorky-yet-lovable Brit. As he's getting older, that role is often passed to Martin Freeman.
His p-p-p-p-persistent nervous s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-studder.
Lorne Greene as a wise and understanding patriarchal figure whose family works with him under his command on a professional basis in Bonanza, Battlestar Galactica and Code Red.
After his debut role as Hives in Animal Crackers (1930), Robert Grieg played the Loyal Butler in something like thirty films. He was also in Trouble in Paradise.
Noel Gugliemi, you probably don't know who that is, but any movie that needs a stereotypical latino gangbanger he is sure to be cast and he'll always say something like "What you say, homes?"
Sid Haig is a gore porn psychopath.
Jerry Haleva is an extreme example. His every credited acting role has been as Saddam Hussein. Though anecdotes seem to suggest he could also have played Stalin.
The Luke Skywalker image probably wasn't lessened by him effectively playing an older version of the character in Wing Commander III and IV, as Colonel Christopher Blair. Particularly not when you consider how to win WC3.
Jon Heder. Need the tall, gangly nerd who talk with a strange speech pattern to rival Shatner? Look no further. To the point that every role he's ever played is just Napoleon Dynamite to some degree.
Take the Italian duo of actors, better known with the Stage Names of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, made famous by spaghetti-westerns and Bash Brothers movies. While the former has found some variation in his career, like playing a live-action Lucky Luke and, currently, a detective priest in a Italian TV Series, the latter (recently turned 80) is stll anchored to the characters he did in his movies — see this commercial.
Michael Imperioli also came to fame playing gangsters, particularly Christopher Moltisanti. Which is funny, considering that most of his roles since have been police detectives.
Samuel L. Jackson nearly always plays foul-mouthedbadasses. Given his record in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Mace Windu wouldn't be nearly as badass in the EU had Jackson not been playing him.
Incidentally, Samuel L. Jackson apparently had trouble not cursing for one movie who was trying to keep a PG-13 rating. They were talking about it in the extras on the DVD.
Far more than the swearing alone, Samuel L. Jackson has simply been typecast ever since Pulp Fiction as a Bad Ass Motherfucker. Before that movie, he played a variety of small roles. Variety as in actually varied.
Samuel L. Jackson is so considered a Bad Ass that when it came time to give the Ultimate Universe version of Nick Fury (the most Bad Ass secret agent this side of James Bond) a new look, he was made to look like... Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson agreed to let them use his likeness on condition of getting to play Fury in the movies.
Ken Jeong as the "obnoxious Asian dude who thinks he's a badass".
German actor Thomas Kretschmann seems to be hopelessly typecast in Nazi roles. He has played a German officer or soldier in 10 unrelated works so far: The Pianist, Valkyrie, Downfall, Eichmann, the 1993 German film Stalingrad, U-571, the Norwegian film Warrior's Heart, Head in the Clouds, In Enemy Hands, and the Sinking of the Laconia, and it seems like he's gonna play another in the Russian 2013 film Stalingrad. On the plus side, he's usually a sympathetic Nazi. On the Jimmy Kimmel Show he stated he's been typecast more as a Captain than a Nazi (though this is probably due to him playing quite a number of Nazi Captains).
This is further added by the fact that after being known for playing the role of Hermann Fegelein in Der Untergang, YouTube users would sometimes make references to his character ("FEGELEIN FEGELEIN FEGELEIN!!!") on almost every video that he appeared on.
Fellow German actor Christian Berkel seems to be in the same situation, though to a lesser extent. He's played a German officer (alternating between Nazis and sympathetic Germans) in Downfall, Valkyrie, Zwartboek, Miracle At St. Anna, and Leningrad. He also made an appearance in Inglourious Basterds although there he's just a bartender.
Cracked: Grammer holds the distinction of being the only actor ever to win three Golden Globes for the same role. Sounds great, until you realize he has three statues at home reminding him every day that, as they lower him into the ground, there's a good chance the priest will accidentally refer to him as "the departed Dr. Crane."
Shia LaBeouf is the young every-dude in sci-fi/action films produced by Steven Spielberg.
Bert Lahr, who played The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, later complained that he was typecast as a lion: "There just aren't all that many parts for lions."
Subverted by Heath Ledger. After 10 Things I Hate About You came out, Ledger dropped off the Hollywood radar for a year, because he didn't want to be cast as the highschool heartthrob for the rest of his career. Afterwards he appeared in The Patriot, Monster's Ball, A Knight's Tale, and others before breaking out in Brokeback Mountain and finally as the Joker in The Dark Knight. His final role was Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Christopher Lee's sepulchral tones have made him a career out of playing villains. Though to be fair, he's well-suited for it, with his razor-thin build, dark eyes, towering height, and powerful deep voice.
Somewhat going against type, he plays Death in the TV adaptation of the first two Discworld novels.
Jared Leto, as the guy who gets the shit kicked out of him.
He's usually some variation of the Universe's resident Chew Toy, Woobie, or, more routinely, an example of Break the Cutie simply because his characters survive the amount of crap they're put through (most of the time...). Requiem for a Dream anyone? Oh wait, how about Lord Of War?
John Lithgow went through a period in the 1980s where he played a scientist in several movies. If it's 1985, and your movie needs a physicist who does not act like a Mad Scientist (with an exception), then John Lithgow is your man.
Yeah, most of his roles were somewhat Dracula-like villains, even when a film wasn't supernatural. This was so much the case that his few good guy roles seem to have been intended in part to surprise the viewers in movies such as The Black Cat (1934). His favorite role was in Ninotchka, where he finally had a romantic role.
Michael Madsen (aka Mr. Blonde) as the ultimate gangster/psycho/both. Interestingly this is used by filmmakers either to create a certain feeling (in Donnie Brasco, I'm not sure we'd be so reluctant to trust Sonny Black in the first half of the movie if he was played by someone else) or to confound our expectations (in Kill Bill, the assassin played by Michael Madsen actually turns out to be a repentant, down-and-out Punch Clock Villain who gets Eviler Than Thoued by Elle Driver.
Actually used amusingly in the War of the Worlds parody bits of the Scary Movie franchise. When the guy offering the heroines shelter pulls down his hood and reveals his face, you know he's a nutcase before he's done anything because it's Michael Madsen.
In recent years, he's been playing American generals and agents in crappy Russian action movies. Why, would you ask?
Walken's gone on record of never turning down a role, mostly because he wants to try anything. While the roles offered tend to be a bit more odd, it did land him his revival from Fatboy Slim's ''Weapon of Choice''.
Huge exception for Gary Oldman: the adorably clueless Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Considering the fact that both lead actors tend to be typecast as creepy villains, the following exchange from said movie becomes particularly awesome:
Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman): I want to go home now.
Guildenstern (Tim Roth): Don't let them confuse you...
James Marsters is almost always a Magnificent Bastard of a villain (even if Love Redeems him later on), probably because his incredibly high cheekbones scream "Did I happen to mention I'm the (sexy) villain?"
Since Ghostbusters, Rick Moranis has been known for playing nerdy characters. According to some sources, he got tired of being typecast, which is why he's been in semi-retirement since 1997 (his primary reason for retirement was because he needed to raise his kids).
Mostly because that's how they are. Both are known for their huge amounts of Improv and most of their roles are just a long Throw It In.
Liam Neeson plays the aged badass with a haunted face and a certain chance of getting killed in his movies. If he doesn't die, he makes other people die in his place. (The last bit can either be about Darkman or Batman Begins)
Jack Nicholson usually plays quirky characters with a deep dark secret like in The Shining, and often he's the Large Ham. Except in some of his more sentimental roles.
Leslie Nielsen is an interesting case in that his style never changed, but his image did a 180 degree turn: Pre-Airplane! he was the stern authority figure, but post-Airplane!: bumbling slapstick idiot. This because the latter always hinged on him delivering completely, outrageously absurd dialogue with a perfectly straight face. Subverted with Creepshow, where he just plays an evil bastard... although it is over the top.
The last guy that tried to type cast Chuck Norris- oh, well, never mind.
Al Pacino, like DeNiro, is always either a mobster or a cop.
To put a little spin on his typecast roles, Scent of a Woman has him played a blind retired war veteran.
Christopher McDonald playing a smarmy Jerkass character.
When Josh Peck was still fat, he was known for playing the nerdy, socially akward goofball kid role.
Ron Perlman is usually cast as Man in a Really Good Monster Costume With None of His Lines Dubbed Over.
Which is a damned shame as his role as Vincent demonstrated that he is more than capable of expressing subtle emotions and doesn't need to always be the Heavy.
Even as the Heavy, his performance as One showed subtle emotions with no monster costume and none of his lines dubbed over even though he doesn't speak French.
It wasn't until Hellboy that he was able to play a lead character in a major movie, usually he is a smaller character and under so much makeup you almost can't recognize him. He's one of those actors that everyone respects, at least those who have heard of him.
Joe Pesci. Loud, angry, streetwise gangster-type from New York with a Hair-Trigger Temper who may or may not be an Ax Crazy psychopath. He's currently retired from acting, perhaps to avoid doing such roles forever. Although he averted this in With Honors as the still crazy, but charismatic and educated bum Simon B. Wilder. His performance as Vinny in "My Cousin Vinny" where he was he wasn't crazy. Though he was still a snarky smart ass in both films.
Jeremy Piven is always the talkative jerk/drunk who spouts off asshole lines for no good reason.
Favio Posca as "the family-friendly version of Fernando Peńa."
When Elvis Presley appeared in movies throughout the 50's and 60's most of them were as the happy-go-lucky guy in musical comedies such as Live A Little, Love A LittleKissin' Cousins and Stay Away Joe. Although he did play against type in a Clint Eastwood-style western called Charro!.
Vincent Price, as 'the really creepy scary movie actor'.
George Reeves, famous for his role of Superman in the 1950s live-action television show, couldn't get himself any serious work, despite many attempts to break that mold. His dead-end career has been one of many theories as to why he shot himself in the head.
According to rumor, he gained a role in the 1953 film From Here To Eternity but his part was cut back when audiences, associating him with Superman, chuckled whenever he appeared on-screen. However Fred Zinnemann, the director, insists that this is not true.
It's a pity that so few people have seen the movies in which he plays The Heavy: in The Gift, he plays a violent, wife-beating redneck, and in The Watcher, he plays a Serial Killer. As an Action Hero? Not so much.
Andrew J. Robinson made his film debut as the baby-faced serial killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry. He was so associated with the role that, despite winning an Emmy as the lead on Ryans Hope, he was recast after 2 seasons because they didn't want someone noted for playing a serial killer as a sympathetic lead. He went on to play a whole string of psychotic killers in films like Hellblazer and Child's Play 3, until he finally got to play one of the good guys: former assassin and torturer Elim Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Edward G. Robinson, before he was known as the vocal inspiration for The Simpsons character Chief Wiggum, was famous for playing gangster Rico in the unflinchingly violent Little Caesar (1931). In his private life, Robinson was an enthusiastic art collector who hated guns — in fact, when firing blanks on the movie set, he had to tape his eyes open to keep from blinking in horror.
Tim Roth usually plays thugs/murderers/convicts/all of the above at the same time. And he tends to die violent deaths.
He's playing a rare good guy (and television role) in Lie to Me.
Adam Sandler frequently plays the Jerk with a Heart of Gold, is Jewish, just like him. He rarely even changes his hair. He also likes to have weird vocal quirks and act like a social retard, yet somehow get the hot female lead.
Sadly, Jerry Seinfeld will never, ever, ever be able to act in any live-action role whatsoever. At least, not until he is past the age of 70. Fortunately, the fact that he is one of the greatest comedy icons of The Nineties doesn't seem to have penetrated his mind, so for ten years he was happy just being a stand-up comedian, as he was before (and within) his prime-time reign.
He gets a lot of positively gushing critical notices for his ability to inhabit different characters. For many viewers who can only see him as a vampire or Tony Blair, this is an Informed Attribute.
John Simm is the man to go to when you want angst. Up until his late thirties, practically all the roles he played were those of cocky, broody, bratty young men (The Lakes, Human Traffic, Cracker). When he isn't playing angsty Northeners (most notably in Life On Mars), he's playing angsty 17th century mercenaries (The Devil's Whore) or angsty 19th century Russian axe mudrerers (Crime and Punishment) or angsty Danish princes (Hamlet) or angsty reporters (State of Play, Sex Traffic). He only breaks out of the angst if he gets to play an over-the-top villain (Caligula, The Master). Fitting for a guy who's frighteningly convincing when he cries.
Edward Van Sloan plays the same vaguely Germanic, gentlemanly, all-knowing doctor who is willing to take on the supernatural in Dracula (1931, as Dr. Van Helsing), Frankenstein (1931, as Dr. Waldman), and The Mummy 1932 (1932, as Dr. Müller).
Will Smith always plays the charming, witty leading man/action hero.
Except in Hancock, in which he plays a drunk loser despite the superpower he has.
Ray Stevenson seems to be starting to get stuck in a typecast as a hedonistic, laid-back, but still formidable warrior type; In Rome he was Titus Pullo, in Thor he portrayed Volstagg, and in The Three Musketeers, he's the type-codifying Porthos.
Patrick Stewart is almost as known for being Professor Charles Xavier these days as he is for his role on Star Trek: TNG.
At least in movies and on TV, he seems to be typecast for the "good, wise non-action leader" role, especially "good king" - which makes it either very funny when he plays against type (see Jeffrey - snarky, somewhat Camp Gay interior designer and Pink Panther activist) or rather unsettling (The Lion in Winter - still superficially the affable "good king", but the dialogue establishes really quickly that he's actually a selfish, scheming jerk who has taken someone raised almost as an adoptive daughter as his mistress)
Terry-Thomas always played an upright Quintessential British Gentleman, although sometimes the "upright" only applied to his posture, and not his morals.
One could summarize Danny Trejo's start in acting thusly: He was training another actor how to fight after having networked his way onto the film in prison, when someone says, "You look like an ex-con! Come over here and play and ex-con." And now, he gets a film showcasing his talents.
It looks like Michael Trucco is being typecast as "the other side of the love triangle". He played that role to Starbuck and Apollo (sort of; their relationship is more complicated), to Leonard and Penny (contributing in their getting together), to Beckett and Castle, and, briefly to Barney and Robin.
Seagal appeared as a parody of his usual roles in The Onion Movie, as the Cock Puncher.
Seagal always plays himself in every role. Always a ex-SEAL/military/CIA/cop agent who unreluctantly finds himself back on the job without. He is also without emotion, merciless and invincible.
Vince Vaughn as the awkward nice guy, whether he's the protagonist or the best friend of the protagonist. He also usually has a hot girlfriend.
Speaking of Psycho, the original Norman Bates - Anthony Perkins - faced typecasting twice. Prior to Psycho, Perkins seemed to be making a career playing the tall-and-gangly, boyishly charming male ingenue-like characters. After Psycho, he ended up playing creepy weirdos/psychopaths a majority of the time.
It wasn't particularly imaginative making Reginald VelJohnson's character in Family Matters a policeman, considering he had already played a cop in Die Hard, Turner And Hooch, Ghostbusters, the TV movie One of Her Own...
Whenever Tom Waits appears in a movie, he's usually crazy and/or magical. The crazy magical hobo schtick is actually a large part of his musical persona too.
David Bowie is a similar case of musical and movie personas overlapping as he is usually cast in roles that take advantage of what the trailer for his movie The Hunger (in which he played a vampire) called his "cruel elegance"; whether his character is good or evil, he usually has a mysterious, cool aura. This has served him well in a colorfulvarietyof rolesovertime. He also isn't afraid to play it for comedy or just play against type on occasion — in the Short FilmJazzin' for Blue Jean he gets to do both!
Roger Ebert said of Patch Adams, "This is a role Robin Williams was born to play. In fact he was born playing it."
He mixes in drama now and then, with Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting. Granted, the funny will still sneak in for a small moment, but it tends to be much, much more subdued and realistic.
Then there's Mrs. Doubtfire, which couldn't make up its mind.
Bruce Willis is always the Bad Asseveryman, and is known for being the king of the heroic comeback, getting beaten to shit by the bad guys and then coming back to win out. Unless we are talking about The Sixth Sense. Or The Siege where he plays a rare villainous part. Or In Country (embittered Vietnam veteran), or Death Becomes Her (a nebbishy doctor), or Mortal Thoughts, or Unbreakable, or...
Sin City put on a small spin: he killed himself, despite winning in the end.
Every role of Henry Winkler aka "Fonzie these days seems to be as an outrageously incompetent lawyer in various sitcoms and movies.
All through The Eighties, Michael Winslow tended to be The Guy Who Makes Noises. In fact, his entire career is built on being The Guy Who Makes Noises. He even admits this.
That's who he is in real life. Though he was a voice in Gremlins.
Elijah Wood is usually typecast as the wide-eyed innocent charming boy, ten years before playing Frodo from The Lord of the Rings. But since LOTR he's been desperately trying to avoid typecasting as, well, Frodo (wide-eyed innocent + The Messiah). In fact, he was cast as a tough vandal in Green Street (also known as Hooligans) because he represented corrupted innocence.
He then completely reverses the ship by playing twisted serial killer Kevin in Sin City.
His last role before The Lord of the Rings was a hitman. A 17 year old hitman in a brilliant comedy. He was the best part of it.
... A Half-Human Hybrid created by the villains to join up with the heroes and bring them down from within, but eventually changes sides through The Power of Love and plays a pivotal role in defeating his creators.
Chow Yun-Fat is good at playing tragic heroes in Hong Kong action movies. Since his work with John Woo, nearly every gunplay role he plays has him using two guns at least once in the movie.
Dwight Frye, the man that played the first Igor-like character Fritz in Frankenstein 1931 was well as doing a very good Renfield in Dracula ended up hating the fact he always ended up playing as "...idiots, half-wits and lunatics on the talking screen!"
It seems as though Kevin James is turning to filling the "sweet natured, but slightly clumsy obese guy" void left by Chris Farley.
Karan Brar (who, granted, isn't in that much yet) will typically play the Indian Funny Foreigner child.
Actresses
Actresses who star in horror movies tend to pick up reputations as "scream queens." Some actresses (such as Debbie Rochon and Jamie Lee Curtis) have embraced the title, while others resent it (Fay Wray wound up taking her career to England because of it). A full list can be found on The Other Wiki.
Overweight black actresses (such as Mo'Nique and Queen Latifah) are often typecast as the Sassy Black Woman, or as a Mammy type back in the day. Such actresses are often criticized for only choosing stereotypical roles, despite the fact that these roles are often the only ones they can get.
Mo'Nique completely averts this in Precious, and it could very well launch her career into new heights.
Hattie McDaniel played so many Mammy maid roles that she noted she would rather play a maid for $700 a week than be a maid for $7 a week.
When Bea Arthur was cast as Dorothy Zbornak in The Golden Girls, the similarities to Maude were noticed immediately and she was asked if she was worried about being typcast. She responded that life was too short to worry about that.
Angela Bettis' characters are either socially outcast and strange (May, the remake of Carrie) or mentally unhinged (May again, Girl, Interrupted)
Jessica Biel was worried enough about her typecasting as the "good girl" from 7th Heaven (which had cost her the lead role in American Beauty) that she posed half-naked for Gear magazine (when she was seventeen!) in order to shake off that image and get out of her contract on the show. It worked.
Nikki Blonsky always seems to get typecast as a fat teenager who's around to prove a point. This may be the main reason why her career never took off despite a lot of hype for her in the beginning.
Characters played by British actresses Imelda Staunton and Pam Ferris are often of the Jerk Ass and/or Sadist Teacher variety. See Harry Potter and Matilda for examples.
Loretta Devine is almost always cast as a doting mother/grandmother. And, she is rarely in starring roles.
"They like to cast me for scary roles. I think it`s because they want you to be scared, but also to like the little girl."
After her roles in 30 Rock and Baby Mama, Tina Fey is practically angling to have herself typecast as neurotic career women with droll personalities. That, or as Sarah Palin.
Let's be honest though, this happens to most attractive young actresses who are both really talented and willing to get naked on camera. See also: Anne Hathaway, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Eva Green, Salma Hayek.
With regards to Kate Winslet, she did so many roles in Costume Dramas in the 1990s that some people jokingly nicknamed her "Corset Kate". See A Kid in King Arthur's Court, Sense And Sensibility, Jude, Hamlet, Titanic, and Quills.
Keira Knightley is giving her a run for her money though "Princess of Thieves', "Pride and prejudice", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Atonement", "King Arthur", "Silk", "The Duchess" "Anna Karenina" Corset Keira anyone?
Katherine Heigl usually plays a high maintenance woman who, while successful in her career, has a poor love life.
Remember how fiesty and colourful Amy Madigan was as the wife in Field of Dreams? Well she's since become typecast as a joyless crone who's probably insane. The mind boggles.
Whenever Marlee Matlin is on screen, the show centers around being deaf. Same goes for Shoshannah Stern.
Marlee's role on The West Wing was mostly unrelated to being deaf. Sometimes (see also her roles in Walker (ever wanted to know the sign language for "Go fuck a pig!"?), The Linguini Incident and My Name Is Earl).
Actress Lupe Ontiveros estimates that she's played a maid between 150 and 300 times on screen.
Ellen Page is either The Troubled Teen or The Smarty Teen. Or both. Not that there isn't a lot of range in thoseroles. With Inception, she breaks new ground playing the smarty college student which is just a bit older than a teenager. Her roles could also be a Tomboy in general.
Joan Plowright is the ultimate Sweet Old English Lady.
C. C. H. Pounder usually plays some sort of Affably Evil authority figure. This even extends to animated works: she was Amanda Waller on Justice League.
Now subverted with Warehouse13: Mrs. Frederic is definitely an authority figure, but rather than being Affably Evil, she is a gruff, kind of creepy Chief who nevertheless not evil (so far).
Keri Lynn Pratt can never be cast as anything but a variation of The Ditz, due to her comically squeaky voice. A ditzy intern on Brothers and Sisters, ditzy girlfriend Missy on Jack And Bobby, then a ditzy sorority girl in Veronica Marsalbeit a manipulative, lying, blackmailing one. With a voice like that, it seems like there's no way for anyone to take her seriously.
Catalina Saavedra originally refused (angrily) the role of Raquel in The Maid (2009 Chilean film) because she had already played too many maids.
Although her most popular role was as Elliot's mom in E.T., the rest of Dee Wallace's acting career seems to subsist of that of the victim in various horror films, with The Howling, The Hills Have Eyes, Cujo and the remake of Halloween 2007 being amoung the most popular.
Subverted in The Frighteners, where she is portrayed as the victim only to change gears halfway through the film to become the villain).
Julie Walters is always the nanny or otherwise responsible for a large group of kids.
Subverted in Mamma Mia!, although it could be taken that in that film she is the nanny for the other two girls.
When Zhang Ziyi appears on the screen, you start to count down to the beginning of some serious Waif-Fu.
Kelly Preston seems to usually play the doting mother in family films (e.g. Jack Frost (1998), What a Girl Wants, The Cat In The Hat, Sky High, Old Dogs, and The Last Song).
A number of girls who have appeared in Play Boy or other "adult" media found regular employment as a Fanservice Extra in sex comedies or horror films, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.
Given the number of times Hayden Panettiere and Christina Milian have played The Cheerleader, The CW missed a trick by not getting one or the other or both to make a guest appearance on Hellcats.
Betty White tends to get typecast in a role and then subverts the typecasting in her next big role. Her role on the Mary Tyler Moore Show was a subversion of her earlier typecasting as a sweet, motherly type. In order to avoid the resulting typecasting as a bitchy, man-hungry character she chose to play the Ditz Rose on Golden Girls rather than the character of Blanche she was offered. She then subverts that typecasting by playing the character of Betty White on Ugly Betty as a Magnificant Bastard who gets the better of the show's antagonist.
Characters played by Mischa Barton usually tend to end up in relationships with other girls, at least briefly. The same is sometimes true for her OC girlfriend Olivia Wilde.
Krysten Ritter usually plays bitchy characters with a heart of gold.
Myrna Loy was a classic example; she spent her early career stuck playing evil foreign vamps, and then when she finally managed to get more high-profile parts, she became best known for playing wholesome mother-type roles.
Has Jennifer Lawrence ever not played a troubled protagonist who spends half the film having her personal problems haunt her?
Despite being Irish in real life Katie McGrath usually plays flighty, occasionally evil British aristocratic beauties.
Both
Many sci-fi actors, especially those who appeared on Star Trek. If you become famous for a role in a sci-fi show or movie, accept the fact that you'll get no work, especially in Film or Live-Action TV, except in guest spots that are parodies of your most famous role.
Patrick Stewart has been able to avoid the Trek curse; sure, his other major mainstream role is Professor X in the X-Men film continuity, but outside of film, he is a very, very respected Shakespearean actor, one of the finest of his generation.
In film he has had a number of good roles — like Scrooge or Henry II.
Shatner isn't so much typecast in Sci Fi so much as he is typecast as himself. Doesn't seem to bother him though, and he does it well.
John DeLancie as a field reporter in Without Warning: Fire From the Sky rather quickly shattered the effect they were going for (a spiritual homage to The War Of The Worlds).
However, if you count voice acting as serious, a number of Next Generation actors found their way into Gargoyles.
Poor DeForest Kelley, on the other hand, jumped from one type of Type Casting (villains in Western movies and shows) to another (he would never do a well-known role again after being cast as Dr. McCoy). However, he was the only major Star Trek cast member who never bitched about it.
Michelle Forbes managed to avoid falling victim to this. After her recurring role as Ro Laren on ST:TNG she went on to play Dr. Julianna Cox on Homicide: Life on the Street, Lynne Kresge on 24, Samantha Brinker on Prison Break, and Maryann Forrester on True Blood, to name just a handful.
The main actors in the 2009 reboot have thus far avoided the problem because they were already well known for other roles, and/or very quickly after the movies release had other projects playing very different roles.
The main characters of Command & Conquer 3 are typecast since their previous roles, as pointed out in a Ctrl+Alt+Del comic.
In general, non-white actors often face a great deal of difficulty in getting roles that don't play up the fact that they aren't white, and so they are often typecast as "ethnic" characters. It's only been recently that this has started to change. Specific examples can be seen above.
Like above with Marlee Matlin, if you have any disability whatsoever, your character is usually tied to that disability, and is the focus of the episode if you're a guest star. See Disabled Character, Disabled Actor for more of these.
