Rename: I Am Not Leonard Nimoy

This is a bad name. It sounds like it should be the opposite of I Am Not Spock, but it's really more of a sister trope than anything. Only 27 wiki links and 74 inbounds since it was launched in August.

edited 23rd Jan '11 3:55:00 PM by Nyktos

Misuse?

Also, as far as I ever known, I Am Not Leonard Nimoy is the opposite of I Am Not Spock and always has been.

Isn't this kind of an exaggerated version of Hey Its That Guy anyways?

^No, it's when viewers do not refer to a character in a story by the character's name but by the name of the actor who plays the character.

For example, referring to the character Will Smith plays in The Legend Of Bagger Vance as Will Smith, rather than Bagger Vance.

Okay, I guess I can see how they're supposed to be opposites — in I Am Not Spock the character overshadows the actor and in this one the actor overshadows the character. It still strikes me as a poor name.

I don't see misuse, but I do see lack of use of what's actually an incredibly common trope.

"incredibly common trope"? Really?

The amount of such popular actors is small by, definition, (as they have to be the most popular, and even more popuar than the characters they play), and it doesn't fit on work pages. These two reasons are enough to cause a small wick count.

It's actually quite the big number. Althoug I think this should have only In-works examples, like The Nostalgia Critic referring to Kevin Costner in a movie as Kevin Costner.

^This isn't really that kind of a trope though.

I will say that any instances on the wiki where anyone talking about scenes from a work distinguishes characters by actor names, rather than use the character names, would have reason to pothole this trope somewhere (e.g. Nearly anywhere Nicolas Cage's name shows up on the trope list for Knowing).

edited 24th Jan '11 8:11:04 AM by SeanMurrayI

It's not just an audience reaction, it's related to Typecasting.

The problem I see with this page is that a lot of people do the identify-the-actor-as-actor-regardless-of-role just as a matter of course. They don't bother with the character's name. They aren't asserting that the actor is overshadowing the role, they're simply using a quick way of identifying which character they're talking about — "Alan Rickman" for example, rather than "Hans Gruber".

I'd prefer to see the page trimmed down to those who really do overshadow the roles they take, or who only ever play themselves.

Jim Carrey used to be an example — The Mask was a Jim Carrey Movie — You couldn't watch it without seeing that it was the actor Jim Carrey playing his persona of Jim Carrey playing some schlub named — what was the character's name, again? I forget. So were the Ace Ventura movies. They were Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey. If you didn't like his schtick, you had no real reason to go to the movie.

Or John Wayne. He played John Wayne in almost every movie he made. And the few where he didn't? They didn't go over very well because people went to a John Wayne movie expecting to see John by-god-he's-The-Duke Wayne.

^Taking a look at the page, some examples look like they were meant to go on a different, related page but the editor seemingly forgot what page he was typing on. What's written after Woody Allen's name on the page has nothing to do with calling a character played by Woody Allen "Woody Allen." Ben Stiller, too. I'm sure there are others.

"I'd prefer to see the page trimmed down to those who really do overshadow the roles they take, or who only ever play themselves."

What might be some objective criteria for that?

How is this not flagged as YMMV?

What's the difference between this and Typecasting? The difference isn't defined at all and they seem to be the same thing.

This trope is about referring to the character by the actor's name. For example, "In Liar Liar, Jim Carrey is hypnotized so that he Cannot Tell a Lie" as opposed to "In Revenge Of The Sith, Anakin Skywalker completes his Character Development and becomes Darth Vader." Typecasting will almost always cause this trope because it results in an actor's characters becoming interchangeable, but they're definitely not the same thing.

Let's put it this way:

• I Am Not Spock: Character overshadows actor, generally because he/she is typecast and not a big name/made it big with one role.
• I Am Not Leonard Nimoy: Inverse of the above. Actor overshadows character, possibly because of typecasting, but more usually because he/she is a big-time A-lister.
• Your Secret's Safe With Me, Superman: Sister trope of I Am Not Spock/the fan reaction to it. Character overshadows actor to the point where the public (or just a couple of fans) forget the latter even exists; the difference, to my mind, would be seeing Leonard Nimoy credited in something and saying "Hey, look, it's Spock!" and seeing him and saying "Hey look, it's Spock...but who's this Leonard Nimoy guy?"

This is clearly YMMV.

I think it's a great name. If you know what the Spock trope is, you know what this is instantly.

And it's definitely YMMV, except I am not Spock isn't YMMV and surely that's been discussed before?

Finally, the description needs to be rewritten very cleverly and the examples cleaned up a bit so it's clear this isn't X Actor gets typecast. A lot of the examples seem to be focussed on the typecast part instead of when an actor is known as the actor, to the point where no-one really thinks of him as being the character

EDIT: I've started cleaning up the examples and Typecasting confusion is a HUGE problem. One of the comments in the discussion is even 'X actor can you think of time when he's not played X role?' I don't know the actor and it might be a correct example but the guy was definitely not thinking about it in the right way. He even used a character name for X role which suggests it's not this

EDIT EDIT: A big problem is this trope is so YMMV it's very hard to think of way to describe an example. A lot of decent examples end up being type-casting because there are only so many ways to say "People think of them as Nicholas Cage movies". At least with I am not Spock you can describe the character they've thought to be and why such a character is popular. Here people can even have a huge range of emotions and roles (George Clooney) and very rarely manage to overcome the shadow of their own fame. He might have a completely different background and personality to over roles, but he's still George Clooney

edited 29th May '11 10:19:38 AM by Tomwithnonumbers

^ Neither I Am Not Spock and I Am Not Leonard Nimoy are currently designated YMMV... but should be. They are purely based on viewer perceptions of a character or a real personality at times when those perceptions should not be relevant (i.e. calling William Shatner "Captain Kirk" when referring only to the actor and not the character and calling Hancock "Will Smith" when referring only to the character in a story).

^^^ Your Secret's Safe With Me, Superman is an actual trope occurring in narrative and fiction where a character in a work makes the mistake of confusing an actor with a character. I Am Not Spock is already a fan reaction, anyway, so if what you are saying this trope is were to be true, it would pretty much be a duplicate page.

More precisely, they should be Audience Reactions.

Bump, should there be YMMV banner on this page or not.

With only 27 wicks, 47 inbounds, and an unclear name, this should really be renamed. Remember that the original Star Trek ended forty-two years ago, and that people nowadays can't be expected to be familiar with details from that series, or with the 34-year-old book I Am Not Spock.

It's actually just expecting people to be familiar with the trope I Am Not Spock, certainly not the book and it fits really well like that.

Also it should have a very low number of examples and links from other pages because it takes a lot for an actor to achieve this. I still think the page has too many examples to be honest, and since it's related to the actor and not the role I'm not even sure if it's very appropriate on most pages but the actors page (and if he's this then he really should have a page)

But then I Am Not Spock has proliferated a lot more (although I would consider it a more common trope) so maybe you have a good point. It's definitely brought a low amount of people to the wiki and it's an absolute pain to search for

It's asking them to remember who played Spock and then identify the connection with I Am Not Spock.

Just sayin'.

Single Proposition Crowner made.