Actors that repeat themselves?

Most comedic actors play the same type of characters in every movie except for when they do a one-off drama role.

Will Farrell
John C Reilly
Melissa McCarthy
Adam Sandler
Ben Stiller
Amy Schumer
Vince Vaughn
etc.

 

Bruce Lee.

 

De Niro repeats himself often, literally.

You talkin' to me..

 

I have a counter-argument for the usual Stallone response.

Consider how difficult it can be for an actor to create TWO (or more) iconic characters that don’t get confused for each other.

When you see a picture of Rocky Balboa, you see Rocky Balboa.
When you see a picture of Rambo, you see Rambo.
People don’t think Rambo is Rocky or vice-versa.
That’s pretty hard to do.

Conversely... When I see a movie poster with Al Pacino, all I see is Al Pacino. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise. Sure, I fall for their characters while watching the films, but the character doesn’t really stick afterward.

 

Rodney Dangerfield

 

The Rock
Keanu Reeves
Tom Cruise

These guys don’t really stray too far from their own character.

 

John Wayne
Sylvester Stallone
Jan Claude Van Damme

 

Franklin Pangborn

 

I agree. A few days ago I bought a cheap Blu-ray box containing 3 Pitt movies: Fight Club, Thelma & Louise and Kalifornia. 3 very different characters.

 

Tom Cruise did pretty well when he was cast out of type for Collateral in 2004. Seems like it's more an issue of others not wanting him to break out of his action hero schlock than his own ability.

 

Very funny in Killing Gunther.

 

Billy Bob Thornton - a talented guy but he does the same shtick over and over and over again. He can be very funny, as in Baytown Outlaws, but it still gets tiresome. Given that he was almost unrecognizable in Sling Blade, I am surprised he doesn't push himself a little more but then again, these are probably just paycheck roles for him, but there sure are a lot of them.

 

I think this is why I like Tom's recent SciFi films Live Die Repeat and Minority Report - he gets the stuffing kicked out of him in both movies and it kind of humbles and humanizes him.

 

Sam Elliot playing western cowboys or similar roles. Clancy Brown playing multiple prison guard roles. (Shawshank, The Hurricane. etc.). Sydney Greenstreet playing multiple crooked "fat man" roles. (Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, etc.)

 

The great Don Stroud - Surfer with an attitude, biker with an attitude, gunslinger with an attitude, etc. Also you could be relatively certain someone was going to beat the living snot out of him at some point. Gotta love him though. The exploitation world would be a poorer place without him!

 

Charles Bronson.

 

Fritz Feld.

 

Vincent Price in his later movies.

 

Surely Clint Eastwood leads this list? While he has done a few variations, the steely Man from Nowhere bit has carried him across the majority of his hit films.

Bronson has been mentioned, but yes...he's pretty much the same every time, only the scum and the artillery change.

John Wayne...the funniest JW films have, inevitably, been the ones where he tried to be something else.

Al PaCINO...

Cary Grant, as said, was always Cary Grant.

Gary Cooper and his drawl was rather constant.

From earlier days, Sir Wilfrid Hyde-White, esteemed British character actor, played the same fussy, surface-polite Englishman in god knows how many films. He showed up in the Twilight Zone doing his thing in "Passage on the Lady Anne". He was so good that it never got boring to watch.

C.

 

Every time Mathew McConaughey says, "alright-"

 

In Hurry Sundown, he played a southern states American and his accent was Dick Van Dyke terrible. Don’t think he’s ever attempted to push the envelope since.

 

Tbf, most of these actors are cast because they have one ‘marketable’ performance. It might not be their only performance, but it’s the one that people want to see. So, they’re not necessarily to blame.

 

He is a good actor though.

 

Tommy Lee Jones brings a similar persona to many of his films. E.g., The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals, Men in Black.

 

Watching Giancarlo Esposito in "The Boys", I can't but think:
Is GUS FRING gonna go up against 'supes'??