Typecasting / Actresses

A-C

• Not even out of puberty yet, Millie Bobby Brown has excelled at playing creepy children. Roles include: a sociopath who killed her mom on NCIS, the possessed host of an immortal serial killer on Intruders, and a girl with telekinetic powers who was raised in a lab and has a propensity for Kubrick staring on Stranger Things.
• 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 might as well have made Mammy her Stage Name; her screen contract forbade her from losing weight. Criticized by other African-Americans for playing these roles, she said, "I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week, than be a maid for $7."
• Characters played by British actresses Imelda Staunton and Pam Ferris are often of the Jerkass and/or Sadist Teacher variety. See Harry Potter and Matilda for examples.
• And now we move onto the Deadpan Snarker Section:
  • Rose McGowan is always the deadpan snarker, because that's who she is in real life.
  • Emma Stone is always the deadpan snarker in teen comedies or rom-coms who often squints her eyes and mouths her words.
  • Mila Kunis is always the deadpan snarker in comedies (though not always the same type). Averted with Oz the Great and Powerful and Max Payne.
• Blondes carry their own stigma: They can either play the Jezebel, the mean girl, the bimbo, or some combination thereof.
• Jennifer Aniston. Plays the girl next door and... the girl next door. Most of her post-Leprechaun movies are Rom Coms, except Derailed (where she has an affair and is raped and blackmailed). Other exceptions: The Good Girl, Marley & Me and Horrible Bosses.
• Devon Aoki is the badass Asian girl.
  • Also, she doesn't talk as much as she acts.
• Amy Acker tends to play scientists whenever Joss Whedon casts her - Angel, Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods, with the exception of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where she played a musician and had the show lasted long enough for her to appear, would have played an actor in Firefly. When she was cast in Person of Interest, she played a computer hacker, which is somewhat simpler. Her characters also tend to be a bit on the crazy side.
• 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.
  • Although, The Golden Girls almost had this happen three times over. Originally the other two parts were reversed, Betty White was to play the bitchy man-eater Blanche and Rue McClanahan was to play to cheerful airhead Rose. These lined up pretty well with the actresses previous roles, White's Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Vivian Harmon of Maude. When the show was cast this way, Arthur declined, saying she didn't want to do "Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann." It was only after the parts were switched that she agreed.
• Silent movie star Theda Bara was known to play The Vamp, she would be as dramatic as her characters. Sadly she was stuck in the type, despite playing wholesome women as well^note  like Juliet and Isabel Carlisle in East Lynne . After ending her contract to Fox she was unable to shake off the Vamp parodying it in 3 silent Comedies. She retired in 1926 just as Sound Films came in.
• Morena Baccarin's most prominent roles have been oddly specific as "Superhero's Girlfriend." Vanessa, Deadpool's Love Interest in the film version. Leslie Thompkins, Jim Gordon's Love Interest in Gotham (as well as the real-life fiance of Ben McKenzie). She's also played Talia al-Ghul (Love Interest to Batman) and Black Canary (Love Interest to Green Arrow) in several DC Animated Universe productions.
• If Ashley Benson appears in any circle of four, she will almost always be Sanguine. Or the Genius Ditz.
• Angela Bettis' characters are either socially outcast and strange (May, the 2002 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 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.
• Claudia Black seems to show up as capable, confident, and very sarcastic characters, whether she is there in person or it is just her voice.
• Helena Bonham Carter used to be The Ingenue. Since the late nineties, however, she's typically been a darkly funny nutcase, often with a dishevelled look (Fight Club, Harry Potter, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Les Misérables (2012)), and when not, she is virtually always in a less-than-glamorous/villainous role (Planet of the Apes (2001), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland (2010))
• Need someone to play a brash, badass woman? Sandra Bullock is your girl.
• Italian actress Margherita Buy is almost always typecast as neurotic, stressed, over-worked career women.
• Charisma Carpenter tends to be cast as the toothy and superficial airhead (with examples such as Buffy and Veronica Mars), though after Angel supplied the former with Character Development she proved that she could do better. Alas.
• Glenn Close doubled down on this one. In the early and mid-1980s, she was nominated for three Oscars playing nurturing, vaguely maternal women (The Natural, The Big Chill and The World According to Garp). Then, she took the Fatal Attraction part and completely U-turned, getting another Oscar nom as a murderously unhinged mistress. She couldn't get out of that stereotype for a while, ultimately playing Cruella de Vil in the live-action 101 Dalmatians (1996), until her recent Oscar nomination for a woman posing as a man.
• Courteney Cox has tended to play uber bitch characters, sometimes with a Hidden Heart of Gold, sometimes without. See: Scream, Dirt, Cougar Town, Tomboy, and her role in Scrubs as examples. Her most famous role was even Flanderised into this.
• Joan Crawford had to suffer greatly in whatever film she starred in. Especially if it was made during the 1930s or 40s.
• Morfydd Clark tends to play a lot of characters with Blue Blood in Costume Dramas taking place either in the 19 century such as Madame Bovary, The Man Who Invented Christmas, The Personal History of David Copperfield and Dracula (2020), or in fantasy settings like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

D-J

• Felicia Day has made a living as the soft-spoken, slightly neurotic geek girl (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Guild, her part on Eureka). Many fans didn't even recognise her when she played a bitter Action Survivor in a couple of episode of Dollhouse. She is since going from neurotic to full-blown mad in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival.
• If you want a Hidden Heart of Gold or Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Aisha Dee is your girl.
• Zooey Deschanel seems to either play the Deadpan Snarker or the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Or both. (See Failure to Launch; she stole the movie.) She's the Love Interest a lot of the time, too.
• Loretta Devine is almost always cast as a doting mother/grandmother. And, she is rarely in starring roles.
  • Except in Urban Legend and its sequel Urban Legends: Final Cut.
• If you are looking for someone to play a beautiful woman that should not be trusted, look no further than Natalie Dormer.
• Need a shrinking violet? This was Lesley-Anne Down's stock and trade during the seventies, eighties, and nineties. She deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award for her facial tics, lip-bitings, and eye-flutterings. Oddly, she also has a history of playing mothers beginning way back in 1994 with Munchie Strikes Back and continuing through Sunset Beach (got knocked up by her own daughter's boyfriend) and The Bold and the Beautiful (an extremely busy cougar).
  Michael K.: Lesley plays Jack Wagner's mom on the show even though she’s only 5 years older than his ass! Most actresses would shank a bitch over that, but Lesley is a true professional and thespian! ...On today’s episode, Jackie got attacked by a cougar on a photo shoot! A real-life cougar, not the kind that slobbers over young peen.
• Eliza Dushku is a sexy, morally unclear tough cookie in practically everything. Even if she's not an Action Girl, she'll still rise to the occasion and beat somebody's ass. (Dollhouse only sealed the deal further.) Harrier jets may be involved.
• Jayne Eastwood is known for playing teacher, grandparent and parent figures on children's TV shows like Ramona, the Animated Adaptation of The Neverending Story, Shining Time Station, The Noddy Shop and JoJo's Circus.
• Anna Faris is not always The Brainless Beauty, but she clearly has no problem with it.
• For a girl who wasn't out of her teens, Jodelle Ferland sure has played a lot of creepy children. See: Bree Tanner in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Sharon/Alessa in Silent Hill, Lilith in Case 39, Jenny in The Tall Man, Patience Buckner in The Cabin in the Woods, and a young Carrie White in the 2002 version of Carrie.
  "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.
• Megan Fox prior to Transformers often played the Alpha Bitch. She's slowly moving out of this, though.
• Summer Glau tends to be cast as adorable, slightly unhinged characters who either kick ass or induce powerful sympathy — sometimes all at the same time.
  "I eat my body weight in food every 31 days. That's slightly faster than the human average."
• Characters played by Heather Graham seem to tend to end up having a lot of sex for one reason or another.
  • It's probably because she's willing to get naked on camera. Constantly.
  • 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. Heck, Helen Mirren's career started this way, and some of her later roles lampshade it tongue in cheek.
• Alyson Hannigan played the sweet, shy Willow before her role in American Pie where she was the sweet, shy Michelle, who turned out to not only be a Covert Pervert but a Dominatrix as well. These character traits would cross over into Buffy and later on her role on How I Met Your Mother.
• Despite having proven herself a capable performer in such films as Taste the Blood of Dracula and The Blood on Satan's Claw, most of Linda Hayden's film roles unfortunately ended up being in sexploitation films, including the first and last entries in the Confessions of a... Series.
• Katherine Heigl usually plays a high maintenance woman who, while successful in her career, has a poor love life.
• Lily James is typically cast as a fresh-faced English Rose or The Ingenue in period piece dramas.
• Ever since The Fifth Element and especially Resident Evil (2002), Milla Jovovich has played her fair share of Action Girls. If not an action girl, she often plays the seductress who gets naked a lot.

K-O

• Deborah Kerr's career was mostly her playing the English Rose Proper Lady in lavish costume dramas - something which From Here To Eternity ^note  Where she played a Fake American unhappy wife who cheats on her husband with a Pearl Harbour soldier was an attempt to break out of. She also played a lot of governesses - The King and I, The Chalk Garden, The Innocents.
• Period Movie: A type of film which features Keira Knightley wearing Gorgeous Period Dress and occasionally nude (usually topless). She's the plucky main character and is most likely a little ahead of her time. She chose to tweak it slightly when Atonement came around as she was approached to play the adult Briony, but chose to play Cecilia instead as she'd "had enough of coming-of-age ladies".
  • Keira Knightley is giving Kate Winslet her a run for her money through Princess of Thieves, Pride & Prejudice (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean, Atonement, King Arthur (2004), Silk, The Duchess and Anna Karenina. Corset Keira anyone?
  • Keira's non-period movies typically have her as a brash Jerk with a Heart of Gold where her love interest is the one that discovers the heart of gold. Bend It Like Beckham, The Hole, Domino and The Jacket are examples.
• Chiaki Kuriyama plays Cute and Psycho (such as Kill Bill, Battle Royale, or Oyayubihime) quite well and she's also a Chronically Killed Actor (The first two films mentioned, The Great Yokai War, among others). In her own words she is often seen as "the scary one".
• Jennifer Lawrence often plays a troubled protagonist who spends half the film having her personal problems haunt her.
  • Having a deceased loved one is also a common element.
• If Blake Lively is part of any circle of four, she will almost always be Sanguine.
• 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.
• 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.
  • Because she does "batshit crazy" really well.
• Due to her dwarfism, most of Patty Maloney's live-action roles were in comedy and speculative fiction, such as Far Out Space Nuts, The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Ice Pirates and the 1991 film of The Addams Family.
• Need a runaway, drug addict, hooker, hellraiser, or otherwise troubled young woman? Taryn Manning’s your gal.
• Mercedes Masohn is Swedish yet has played Latinas on Castle, The Finder, Common Law, and NCIS: Los Angeles.
• 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 (ditto for The Magicians). Sometimes (see also her roles in Walker [ever wanted to know the American sign language gesture for "Go fuck a pig!"?], The Linguini Incident and My Name Is Earl).
• Jodhi May in the first decade of her career tended to be cast as a massive Woobie, whether in A World Apart (borderline Jerkass Woobie, although she gets a Heel Realization), The Last of the Mohicans (Stoic Woobie), Sister My Sister (Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds) or the 1999 BBC adaptation of The Turn of the Screw (either a Haunted Heroine or an Unreliable Narrator, but still a Woobie). She spent much of the following few years concentrating on theatre, and then showed up in Game of Thrones as creepy, evilly-laughing Hot Witch and Hermit Guru Maggy the Frog, so, typecasting averted there.
• Sierra McCormick is typically cast as one of various types of strange girl, most frequently the Cloudcuckoolander (A.N.T. Farm) and Creepy Child (Supernatural, Jessie).
• Despite not even being 21 yet, Jennette Mccurdy of iCarly fame has already been typecast to several Alpha Bitch characters as well as the occasionally sociopathic Sam Puckett.
• Despite being Irish in real life, Katie McGrath usually plays flighty, occasionally evil British aristocratic beauties.
• Chloë Grace Moretz is the precocious strange girl who is almost always Wise Beyond Her Years ((500) Days of Summer, Hugo), sometimes engages in Troubling Unchildhood Behavior (Kick-Ass, Hick), and is often somehow connected to the supernatural (Let Me In, Dark Shadows, the 2013 Carrie and Emily the Strange adaptations).
• Cathy Moriarty was an unknown before her splash as Vicki LaMotta, and looked to be Hollywood's newest sexpot. One nasty car wreck and 8 million cigarettes later, and, well... While by no means unattractive today, most of her credits have been black comedies or horror flicks.
• Actress Lupe Ontiveros estimated that she'd played a maid between 150 and 300 times on screen.

P-Z

• Sarah Jessica Parker tended to play sexy airheads in her pre- Sex and the City days (L.A. Story, Hocus Pocus, Mars Attacks!). After she did Sex and the City she has mostly played brainy but uptight or neurotic romantic heroines (The Family Stone, Smart People.)
• Lana Parrilla's two biggest roles (in Once Upon a Time and Why Women Kill) are as a female antagonist known for being both cruel and beautiful who later has a change of heart and learns the error of her ways; plus both characters' names start with "R".
• Joan Plowright is the ultimate Sweet Old English Lady, except for Bringing Down the House where she plays a racially-ignorant Grande Dame who gets stoned and becomes a Cool Old 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.
  • Oddly averted in her breakout role, Bagdad Cafe, where she is in charge of delivering the Whoopi Epiphany Speech.
  • Now subverted with Warehouse 13: 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 & Sisters, ditzy girlfriend Missy on Jack & Bobby, then a ditzy sorority girl in Veronica Mars albeit a manipulative, lying, blackmailing one. With a voice like that, it seems like there's no way for anyone to take her seriously.
• Kelly Preston seemed 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 (2005), Old Dogs, and The Last Song).
• Lucy Punch (real name) gets regular work as the boozing, superficial floozy. She's been trying to break into Hollywood of late, resulting in a few serious roles—or, at times, even sluttier ones (Dinner for Schmucks).
• Given the number of times Hayden Panettiere and Christina Milian have played cheerleaders, The CW missed a trick by not getting one or the other or both to make a guest appearance on Hellcats.
• Linnea Quigley was always the girl in horror movies who gets naked.
• Monica Rial is almost always found voicing an peppy, innocent schoolgirl, mostly because the voice she almost always uses is in fact her real, natural voice. There are exceptions such as when she voiced Lyra in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Nyamo in Azumanga Daioh, and you can occasionally find her voicing non-type background characters, with her voice lowered several octaves.
• Krysten Ritter usually plays bitchy characters with a heart of gold. Or the Dark of Light Feminine and Dark Feminine.
• Michelle Rodriguez is almost invariably a sexy, tank-top-wearing badass Latina Action Girl who dies a heroic death. Cracked.com has the details. She's perfectly content with it by the way, as she prefers playing this type of character.
• Catalina Saavedra originally refused (angrily) the role of Raquel in The Maid (2009 Chilean film) because she had already played too many maids.
• Katee Sackhoff, ever since her Star-Making Role as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace on Battlestar Galactica (2003) has become stuck with "Starbuck-lite" roles: tough, no-nonsense Action Girls in a Space Opera or at least sci-fi oriented work, often with a hidden emotionally vulnerable side.
• Marianne Sägebrecht has made a career of being a Big Beautiful Woman romantic lead, with her having a nude scene in most of her roles.
• Luciana Salazar as "eye candy on rehashed sequel of an old comedy franchise/movie based on cartoon".
• For a hot minute in the 1980s, Mia Sara was your go-to gal if you needed a Spirited Young Lady.
• Ever since The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Brenda Song has been typecast as the Asian Airhead in Disney productions. Ironically, her first major role was in a Nickelodeon show, 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd, as an egghead — a retroactive Playing Against Type. Outside of Disney, she still occasionally gets typecast as an Asian Airhead. It seems she's just good at really crazy comedy.
• Brooke Sorenson seems to always play Alpha Bitches.
• Octavia Spencer's three Oscar-nominated roles have been black women working under white people in 1960s America: Minny Jackson in The Help, Dorothy Vaughan in Hidden Figures, and Zelda Fuller in The Shape of Water. Outside of those, she's almost always the Token Black Friend.
• Tilda Swinton as the androgynous Ice Queen. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button completely turns it around with her as a Shrinking Violet who is also a Romantic False Lead.
  • In her first starring role as the titular hero/ine of Orlando, she's a Wide-Eyed Idealist Gender Bender who becomes a Cool Old Lady whose Immortality Begins at Twenty. In Michael Clayton she's a Dirty Coward Punch-Clock Villain.
• 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 (1977), Cujo and the remake of Halloween 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).
• 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.
• Stacie Leah Rippy manages to avert this trope, although she is a character actor. However, she's mainly relegated to background work (sadly). Especially given her British fandom.
• Icy blondes? The example to beat is Ally Walker and her giant hair. Best known as crooked ATF Agent June Stahl on Sons of Anarchy, she has also played, in order: a gold digger client on L.A. Law, a mean boss on Tales from the Crypt, a shrill fiancee in While You Were Sleeping ("You one-balled bastard!"), and a racist housewife on Law & Order. Admittedly, her long filmography features a couple of benign characters, e.g. the heroine in Profiler and the mom in Kazaam.
• Holland Taylor as the Evil Matriarch, usually a rich and comedic one.
• Shirley Temple was faced with this as she grew up and took on more mature roles as a teenager. Her acting career declined mostly as people came to associate her more as a cherubic little girl than a saddle shoe-wearing bobby-soxer, and she couldn't shake off her reputation as a child star even well into her political and later diplomatic career, with sketch comedies such as The Carol Burnett Show mocking her bid for Congress, Stand Up And Cheer costume and all. She is however fine with the legacy she left as a child actress, though.
• Jessica Walter has also fallen victim to this ever since Arrested Development started.
• 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.
  • If you ever saw Stepping Out.
• Betty White tended to get typecast in a role and then subverted the typecasting in her next big role. Her role on the 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 The Golden Girls rather than the character of Blanche she was offered. She then subverted that typecasting by playing the character of Betty White on Ugly Betty as a Magnificent Bastard who gets the better of the show's antagonist.
• Kathleen Wilhoite has a very strange and idiosyncratic typecasting. If you've seen her on TV and recognize her, she's usually playing an unstable, abusive/neglectful mother who often struggles with substance use and has terrible taste in men. Her two most well-known recurring acting roles (that aren't voice-over work) are basically playing the same character.
• 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 (1997), and Quills.
• Anna May Wong was type-cast as a Dragon Lady most of the time. Being an Asian-American actress in the 1920s and 1930s, there wasn't much else she was allowed to do. She wanted to play as the leading lady in The Good Earth however The Hays Code prevented her (they instead gave her role to a white woman in yellowface due to the leading male being white). Anna May Wong was offered to play the villain but turned it down due to taking offense at the idea she would play the bad guy in a film about Chinese people, where every major Chinese character was played in yellowface.
• When Zhang Ziyi appears on the screen, you start to count down to the beginning of some serious Waif-Fu.

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