- 10 hours ago
There are some roles actors were born to play.
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00:00In an era where franchising is the grease that lubes up the gears of Hollywood,
00:05ooh, roles are rarely occupied by just one actor. Whether it's reboots constantly changing the face
00:10of your favourite superheroes seemingly every other year, or performers being swapped out of
00:15prestige pieces due to boring old scheduling conflicts, there are few roles that are so
00:20sacred studios and fans alike couldn't picture anyone else giving their take on them. However,
00:25that only makes those rare instances where a character is so perfectly cast,
00:30and the synergy between an actor and their role appears so effortless even better.
00:34That overused phrase used by critics to champion an actor of,
00:38it was the role they were born to play, might be a little bit meaningless now,
00:42but in these cases, yeah, that old saying absolutely holds water.
00:47I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 iconic characters only one actor could play.
00:53Number 10, Ray Nicolette, Michael Keaton.
00:55Michael Keaton has had plenty of roles he's defined, from Batman to Beetlejuice,
01:00but it was a surprising turn in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown that he embodied so singularly.
01:06In that movie, he plays Ray Nicolette, a hard-ass FBI agent with the weirdest interrogation tactic
01:12ever. Namely, he kinda just walks around and then perches on chairs in uncomfortable ways
01:18as an intimidation tactic, at least that's what I took from it anyway.
01:22However, Jackie Brown was based on the book Rum Punch and was made by Miramax,
01:26so when Universal set its own sights on adapting the text's follow-up out of sight,
01:31they faced the issue of having to cast someone else to play Ray.
01:35That said, despite the rights to both works being held by two different studios,
01:39rather than cast someone new, Michael Keaton actually returned uncredited to play the role again,
01:45partly because old QT himself convinced Miramax to not force Universal to cough up money for the cameo.
01:52Number 9, M, Judi Dench.
01:54The James Bond franchise has never really had any qualms with recasting characters.
01:59Hell, part of the appeal is that the central hero perseveres across decades via the magic of
02:04Hollywood casting agents. M, Bond's boss and MI6 head honcho has also been a role swapped
02:10out to new actors playing successors to the throne. Each version of M is admittedly a different
02:15in-universe character, but that makes it even more impressive that the series went to such great
02:19lengths to not recast Judi Dench's version, who quickly came to overshadow the rest.
02:24Dench's M was introduced in Goldeneye, and the actor's cold, no-nonsense takedown of 007 made her an
02:31instant fan favourite. So much so that when the series was rebooted with Casino Royale, the producers asked the
02:37actor to reprise her role in a move that could have destroyed the clean break they were striving for.
02:42There have been M's before, and there'll be plenty after, but this version can never be replicated.
02:47Number 8, Ash Williams, Evil Dead.
02:50If you've only ever seen the first Evil Dead, you might wonder why Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams
02:54has remained an enduring horror icon. In that first flick, he's actually a bit of a meathead,
03:00and only survives where his friends died through a good dose of luck. It was the sequel where the
03:05character really came into his own though, which was necessary considering the first half of that
03:09film is essentially an Ash one-man show. Blending horror and physical comedy in a way few other actors
03:15have ever achieved, the first half of Evil Dead 2 is a gauntlet of personal nightmares for Ash,
03:20and Campbell captures the manic insanity with gusto. And after being put through the ringer,
03:26the second half and subsequent rest of the franchise sees the character transformed into a
03:30bumbling yet unwaveringly charismatic action hero, with a chainsaw for an arm and a shotgun
03:36for a partner. Like seriously, the lines this dude spouts would have sounded absolutely ridiculous
03:42coming out of any other actor's mouth, but Campbell turned them into some of cinema's most memorable.
03:47Number 7, The T-800, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
03:51Old Arnie Schwarzenegger isn't the only Terminator in James Cameron's classic sci-fi franchise,
03:56but he's arguably the only one fans care about. Well, Robert Patrick's T-1000 notwithstanding.
04:02He debuted as the villainous T-800 in the first film, and then returned for cinema's greatest babyface
04:07turn in the sequel, completing his arc and sacrificing himself in Molten Metal, but not before netting
04:13another cinematic best in the movie industry's greatest ever thumbs up. At that point, two different
04:19versions of Arnie's character had been destroyed, and yet following movies continued to bring him
04:24back, even when the actor couldn't turn up in the flesh. Shocked and appalled at the very thought
04:30of having either someone else play the T-800 or omitting him entirely, Salvation even CGI'd Arnie
04:36into the movie onto the body of another actor. The desire to see him constantly come back is partly
04:42because nobody can quite mix mechanical menace and alien endearment the same way as Arnie can,
04:48with only a few looks and a couple of lines, the hulking performance was burned into the minds of
04:53audiences everywhere, to the point where, for better or worse, there's just no franchise without
04:58Arnold Schwarzenegger. He'll always, always be back. Number 6, Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford.
05:05Harrison Ford has such a defining presence and an undying charisma that you could make the argument
05:10that pretty much any of his roles could only be played by him. The most notable time someone else
05:16jumped into the boots of a character he made famous was Alden Ehrenreich's take on Han Solo in
05:21Solo A Star Wars Story, which pretty much amounted to the actor doing his best Harrison Ford impression
05:26for around two hours. That obviously did not go down well, and that's partly because Ford brings so
05:33much of himself to his defining characters, especially Indiana Jones. There is no franchise without
05:38Ford though, and nobody else could embody this lovable rascal of a hero, especially not Shia LaBeouf.
05:44Number 5, The Mask, Jim Carrey. In a lot of ways, Jim Carrey only really ever plays Jim Carrey in
05:51movies, well with the exception of certain things like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
05:56Especially during his peak in the 90s, there was nobody else able to do the kind of outlandish physical
06:01comedy the actor made millions perfecting, and his reputation of essentially being a human cartoon
06:07made him a perfect match for The Mask. After all, this was a film about a literal cartoon character
06:13come to life via the power of a magical mask, and there's nobody in the world animated enough to do
06:18that premise justice in live action than the man who became famous because of his rubber face.
06:24In this movie, Carrey's regular overacting was ramped up even higher, and the ridiculous green makeup
06:30only made the comic's unnatural facial contortions all the more hilarious and pronounced. The reason
06:35there are few sequels to Jim Carrey movies is that Jim Carrey doesn't like doing them, and even
06:40Hollywood recognizes that he is the be all and end all of the films he stars in, and that goes double
06:46for a character like The Mask. And yes, I am just going to sit here and pretend Son of the Mask just
06:51doesn't exist because we're all better off for it. Number 4, Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise. I've talked a lot so
06:58far about actors embodying their characters and blurring the line between performer and role,
07:03but nobody takes that quite as far as Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible series. Though he
07:08technically plays a character called Ethan Hunt, a top level secret agent with a seriously toxic on
07:14and off again relationship with his bosses at the Impossible Mission Force, he really just plays Tom
07:19Cruise. Or at least the imagined version of superstar actor Tom Cruise everyone has in their heads. In the
07:25run-up to these movies and in the weeks following their release, the focus is never on what's
07:30happening to Ethan in the films, but what insane new stunt Cruise has put himself through. The actor
07:35insists on doing his own daring stunts, whether that's performing a real-life Halo jump, hanging on
07:41to the side of a real plane taking off, or putting thousands of hours into getting a flight license so
07:46he can correctly pilot a helicopter during action scenes. Cruise's mad dedication to the role is why
07:52Mission Impossible remains so successful, and trying to replace him with an actor even half as committed
07:58would cause it to self-destruct. Cough, Jeremy Renner, cough. Number 3. Princess Leia Carrie Fisher
08:05At one point the idea of recasting the original Star Wars cast with younger actors probably appealed to
08:10Disney. Solo was the film that tested the waters on that front though, giving audiences new versions of
08:16Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, and while both were interesting takes, especially Donald Glover's Lando,
08:22both lived in the shadow of the previous stars. Like I mentioned earlier, it didn't help that the
08:27performances of the new actors felt like imitations of what came before. Even without that in mind though,
08:33the idea of recasting Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia would have been an incredibly controversial move.
08:38Even her silhouette, those buns from A New Hope for instance, that I definitely did not take hairstyle
08:44inspiration from, is instantly iconic, and Fisher across the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy
08:50brought such heart to the galaxy far far away. Young Leia has been needed in other movies like Rogue
08:56One, but the Mouse House opted to use digital scans of Fisher rather than recast. Number 2.
09:02Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. Even though I've hypothesized over the qualities needed to decide
09:08whether or not an actor is irreplaceable, often it just comes down to basic maths. Yeah,
09:14it might not be that sexy, but it's a concrete method. For instance, the ludicrous amount of
09:19money Robert Downey Jr. has earned playing Iron Man is a testament to just how inseparable the actor
09:24and hero are, and how much fans have invested in the two being one and the same. For the Avengers,
09:30Downey Jr. reportedly took home $50 million, he netted $1 million a minute for Spider-Man Homecoming,
09:36and secured a whopping $75 million payday for Avengers Endgame. Put simply, studios just don't
09:44pony up that kind of money if they can swap the actor out for someone less costly. Of course, Robert
09:49Downey Jr. absolutely knows this. When Tony Stark announced at the end of the first Iron Man that he
09:55was the superhero, that wasn't just a statement from the character, but also from the actor playing him.
10:01From there on, the two would become inseparable, and though the world of superheroes means there'll
10:06no doubt be another Tony Stark at some point, whoever takes the reins will always be living
10:10in the shadow of Downey Jr.'s work. Number 1, J. Jonah Jameson, JK Simmons.
10:16It's so easy to get J. Jonah Jameson wrong. The loudmouth newspaper editor could quickly become
10:22abrasive and obnoxious to the point where he simply allowed annoyance in the wrong hands,
10:27but he remained a highlight of Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man trilogy because JK Simmons
10:31plays assholes like nobody else. He was so good, in fact, that when Sony rebooted the Spidey series,
10:37they omitted the character entirely rather than try to recast him, because Simmons' take was so
10:43entrenched in the minds of fans. Even when a second reboot came around, introducing a new Jonah was put
10:48off once again, and nearly two full standalone movies went by without the character showing up. However,
10:54in the final moments of Spider-Man Far From Home, a news bulletin from the Daily Bugle is displayed
11:00all throughout New York, led by none other than Simmons' JJ. Like with Sony and M, which we've
11:05already mentioned, the studio risked shattering the clean break of this second reboot by bringing back
11:11a character and actor from a previous universe, but it worked a treat. JK is JJ, and fans will happily
11:18ignore a continuity blurring appearance to have both him and the character back for good.
Recommended
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