A few weeks ago I wrote a piece here on actors belonging to a certain place and time. I mentioned how Lloyd Bridges and Beau Bridges seemed out of place in pre-revolutionary France in The Fifth Musketeer but both would work fine in a movie taking place in the west in the 19th century. It’s not that they couldn’t play period but that they had a specific period. It’s a kind of gentler side to typecasting, perhaps something called time-casting. As soon as I was done, I started thinking about typecasting and how most of us think of it as being cast again and again in a particular type of role, like a villain. But practically every successful actor is typecast because every successful actor has a range with which they’re comfortable and the audience is, too. Most actors we think of as being typecast are supporting players or, as they’re more commonly referred to, character actors. But what about the leads? They all have types to, they just don’t necessarily fit into specific roles.
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A couple of years back I was watching The Changeling. It’s the horror movie from 1980 starring George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere, and directed by Peter Medak. Scott plays his character exactly how you would expect Scott to play a character: strong, gruff, determined. The characters Scott played throughout his career had an authority to them because Scott had an authority to him (and I don’t want to hear that lazy “critique” about actors playing themselves – actors play to their strengths, it’s a different thing). All of this was fine until about a third of the way through the movie when Scott finds out some information about the ghost boy haunting his house. It confirms something he’s only suspected but didn’t want to believe and when it sinks in he… he… faints. George C. Scott rolls his eyes back and faints. George C. Scott! To me, that was and is a failure of direction. Directors omit things provided in the script all the time. They make creative decisions like that every minute of every day when directing. It’s like a quarterback, once the ball is hiked and the play breaks apart. He makes decisions based on what’s available to him and the talents before him. In this situation, Peter Medak should have, but didn’t, instantly say, after laughing, “No, no, George simply isn’t the type to faint. That’s ridiculous. Scrub that. Let’s have you take a deep breath, and maybe down a shot of whiskey. It’s all cliche anyway, let’s at least pick the one that works for George.” To me, the scene as played, announces clearly and boldly that Medak has no idea what actor he has in front of him. Scott was type. Not the “always a villain” type. Not “always a hero” type. He was a personality type. And his personality was strong, unwavering, and relentless. He was NOT the fainting type.
We often hear of an actor playing against type when, in fact, they’re still playing their type, they’re just doing it an a slightly more unusual role. It’s often been mentioned that Donna Reed won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing against type by playing a prostitute in From Here to Eternity. Aside from the fact that her character is almost unrecognizable as a prostitute, Reed isn’t playing against type at all. Her prostitute is sweet and kind and gentle. You know, like the characters types Reed always played! That role isn’t against type at all for her, just the character’s profession. Against type for Reed would have been a character that was heartless and cold. It could be a mother or girlfriend, just as it had been in so many other movies and on tv, except that she wouldn’t be lovable at all. In other words, having her play a homemaker wouldn’t be typecasting if the homemaker she was playing was a selfish, manipulative, serial cheater. An actor can play the same character type ten different times with ten different personalities and not be typecast. Of course, Reed never did that. In fact, I don’t think Reed ever played against type once and that’s fine. She was great for the type she played. But even in From Here to Eternity, make no mistake about it, she was typecast.
Another famous case of not actually playing against type but playing against period (and I mentioned it in my actors belonging to a period piece) is John Wayne in the awful The Conquerer as Genghis Khan. It’s often cited as a case of dreadful miscasting but it’s not really. Khan was a strong, commanding figure and that’s exactly the type John Wayne played. It’s just that the movie’s bad and Wayne feels wrong in that period but the role? Hell, that’s the kind of type Wayne did best. People confuse putting an actor in the wrong period with putting an actor in the wrong role.
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When I think of an actor playing against type, I think of an actor playing against their personality. That would mean James Cagney playing a stuttering, insecure, wallflower type. It would mean Margaret Sullavan playing a loud, brassy, strident know-it-all. It would mean taking who the actor really is and making them something else even if the role is the same. Take Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s a western. Fonda played westerns. But in this one, he’s not understanding, patient, and perservering. That’s Tom Joad. That’s his president in Fail Safe and his presidential candidate in The Best Man. That’s his jazz man in The Wrong Man. That’s his juror in 12 Angry Men. It’s even, to a degree, his cantankerous old grump in On Golden Pond. In this one, he’s not kind, not understanding, not thoughtful. He’s cruel, mean, and deadly. It was a case of a director actually casting an actor against type and succeeding magnificently. Another good case, recently, was casting endlessly self-doubting, unsure Albert Brooks of Lost in America and Defending Your Life as the decisive and cold mobster in Drive.
If you do a search on badly miscast movies, what you will find time and time again are lists of bad performances in, usually, bad movies. Some actor doing a stoically wooden job isn’t miscasting, it’s bad casting. It’s casting an actor that’s not good enough for the material, like Keanu Reeves in Dracula, for instance, or an actor where the type is right but the material is wrong, like John Wayne in The Conqueror. Casting against personality type, however, rarely actually happens. When it works, it’s a thing of beauty to see, like Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. Most of the time, people just think someone’s been cast against type because the character doesn’t have the same exact profession as every other one of the actor’s previous roles. But rest assured, Donna Reed could play a prostitute in every movie and if it was the same sweet, understanding character she won her Oscar for, she never be playing against type, even if she played a prostitute in every movie from here to eternity.