Separating the Actor from the Character

I have been on vacation, which has made it hard to keep up a blog, but while on vacation I started thinking about a subject I found quite interesting.  Oftentimes, people have trouble separating the character from the actor playing that character, especially if that was a "breakout role" for that character and they are not known for a ton else before it.




What made me think of this was when I went to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying which starred Daniel Radcliffe, famous for portraying Harry Potter.  I went to the stage door after the show to see if he would come out.  There was a huge crowd (obviously).  The one thing I noticed is that when I could overhear conversations, no one mentioned Daniel Radcliffe, they all mentioned Harry Potter.  They did not want to meet the actor who played Harry Potter, they wanted to meet the persona of Harry Potter they now see in their heads.

Adrien Grenier or Vinny Chase?

Its a phenomenon that many actors try to live down.  Its a common form of the "typecast" when someone cannot get out of a certain role.  Often, it is because they became so famous for a specific role, even casting directors cannot separate the actor from the character they played.  These casting directors are human too, prone to the same flaws as you or I.  There are so many actors who have not been able to live down a role, although it is much more common in Television.  James Gandolfini is a good example, he will never live down Tony Soprano.  Nor will Adrien Grenier live down Vincent Chase.  Sportswriter Bill Simmons even joked on his podcast it would help Grenier's career to legally change his name to Vincent Chase because no one knew him as Grenier.  How many juicy movies have great TV stars like Shatner or Winkler gotten?  One has been reduced to priceline commercials and the other has been reduced to two-bit Adam Sandler movies.

There are a lot of examples of this in movies too, though many of these examples are with movie series'.  I am impressed at the way Elijah Wood has attempted to separate himself, but I still sometimes see him as Frodo.  The career of Mark Hammil has suffered because no one can separate him from Luke Skywalker.  Other examples of actors typecast from a series would be Ralph Macchio, Paul Hogan, Jason Biggs, Christopher Reeve, and Macauley Culkin.  The mental process that people use to link a familiar image to a familiar word links them to The Karate Kid, Crocodile Dundee, Jim, Superman, and Kevin (mcallister).

It can happen with bigger movies, though it is rarer because you get less exposure over time to these characters.  Its also easier to break out of when it is only one movie.  Kate Winslett and Dicaprio have broken out even though Titanic was one of the biggest hits in history, however Ray Liotta people still see his face and think "Henry Hill".  Heath Ledger will forever be known as the joker, but unfortunately, life did not give him a chance to outlive it.  Peter Billingsley however will never outlive being "Ralphie" in A Christmas Story.

Our minds use recall in interesting ways and unfortunately, it hurts many actors who had huge roles.  We see an actor, our brain performs facial recognition, and our hippocampus tells us "oh, thats _____ from the film (or show) ____".  Because our brain has to do so much, it often takes shortcuts in helping us remember and this is one of them.  Fortunately, its not always too late to make a first impression in acting.  Dicaprio did it, Winslett did it, hopefully so can Radcliffe.

First google picture result for Daniel Radcliffe

I believe he can more than any young actor associated with a role (Emma Watson will never be typecast because she quickly developed a public persona outside of her character, a shortcut to beating the typecast).  He already has starred in 2 different Broadway shows, guest starred on Extras, and has a movie coming out where he stars and it is a nice B-budget film.  His career will be compared to Wood's (Harry Potter was often compared to LOTR and Wood and Radcliffe were both young stars (Wood was about 22 when all the filming was complete for LOTR).  Wood has the advantage of doing more before the series, but Radcliffe may turn out to be as equally good of an actor.