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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.
00:35That 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.
00:52Number 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 Run 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 Hollywood
02:04casting agents. M, Bond's boss and MI6 head honcho has also been a role swapped out to new actors
02:11playing successors to the throne. Each version of M is admittedly a different in-universe character,
02:16but that makes it even more impressive that the series went to such great lengths to not recast
02:21Judi Dench's version, who quickly came to overshadow the rest. Dench's M was introduced in Goldeneye,
02:27and the actors' cold, no-nonsense takedown of 007 made her an instant fan favourite. So much so that when
02:33the series was rebooted with Casino Royale, the producers asked the actor to reprise her role,
02:38in a move that could've destroyed the clean break they were striving for. There have been M's before,
02:43and 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
03:15actors have ever achieved, the first half of Evil Dead 2 is a gauntlet of personal nightmares for Ash,
03:21and 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 bumbling,
03:31yet unwaveringly charismatic, action hero. With a chainsaw for an arm, and a shotgun for a partner.
03:37Like seriously, the lines this dude spouts would've sounded absolutely ridiculous coming out of any
03:43other actor's mouth, but Campbell turned them into some of cinema's most memorable.
03:48Number 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
04:06babyface turn in the sequel, completing his arc and sacrificing himself in Molten Metal, but not
04:13before netting another cinematic best in the movie industry's greatest ever thumbs up. At that point,
04:19two different versions of Arnie's character had been destroyed, and yet following movies continued to
04:24bring him back, even when the actor couldn't turn up in the flesh. Shocked and appalled at the very
04:29thought of having either someone else play the T-800, or omitting him entirely. Salvation even
04:35CGI'd Arnie into the movie onto the body of another actor. The desire to see him constantly come back
04:41is partly because 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 burnt 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.
05:02Number 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
05:21A 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
05:32so much of himself to his defining characters, especially Indiana Jones. There is no franchise
05:38without Ford though, and nobody else could embody this lovable rascal of a hero, especially not Shia LaBeouf.
05:44Number 5. The Mask, Jim Carrey
05:47In a lot of ways, Jim Carrey only really ever plays Jim Carrey in movies, well with the exception of
05:53certain things like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Especially during his peak in the 90s,
05:58there was nobody else able to do the kind of outlandish physical comedy the actor made millions
06:03perfecting, and his reputation of essentially being a human cartoon made him a perfect match for The Mask.
06:09After all, this was a film about a literal cartoon character come to life via the power of a magical
06:15mask, and there's nobody in the world animated enough to do that premise justice in live action
06:20than the man who became famous because of his rubber face. In this movie, Carrey's regular overacting
06:26was ramped up even higher, and the ridiculous green makeup only made the comic's unnatural facial
06:32contortions all the more hilarious and pronounced. The reason there are few sequels to Jim Carrey movies is
06:37that Jim Carrey doesn't like doing them. And even Hollywood recognizes that he is the be all and
06:43end all of the films he stars in, and that goes double for a character like The Mask. And yes,
06:48I am just going to sit here and pretend Son of the Mask just doesn't exist because we're all better
06:53off
06:53for it. Number 4. Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise
06:57I've talked a lot so far about actors embodying their characters and blurring the line between performer and
07:02role, but nobody takes that quite as far as Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible series.
07:07Though he technically plays a character called Ethan Hunt, a top level secret agent with a seriously
07:13toxic on and off again relationship with his bosses at the Impossible Mission Force, he really just
07:18plays Tom Cruise. Or at least the imagined version of superstar actor Tom Cruise everyone has in their
07:24heads. In the run up to these movies and in the weeks following their release, the focus is never on
07:30what's happening to Ethan in the films, but what insane new stunt Cruise has put himself through.
07:35The actor insists on doing his own daring stunts, whether that's performing a real life Halo jump,
07:40hanging onto the side of a real plane taking off, or putting thousands of hours into getting a flight
07:45license so he can correctly pilot a helicopter during action scenes. Cruise's mad dedication to the role
07:52is why Mission Impossible remains so successful, and trying to replace him with an actor even half as
07:57committed would cause it to self destruct. Cough, Jeremy Renner, cough.
08:023. Princess Leia Carrie Fisher At one point the idea of recasting the original Star Wars cast
08:08with younger actors probably appealed to Disney. Solo was the film that tested the waters on that front
08:14though, giving audiences new versions of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, and while both were interesting
08:20takes, especially Donald Glover's Lando, both lived in the shadow of the previous stars. Like I mentioned
08:25earlier, it didn't help that the performances of the new actors felt like imitations of what came before.
08:31Even without that in mind though, the idea of recasting Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia would have been
08:36an incredibly controversial move. Even her silhouette, those buns from A New Hope for instance,
08:42that I definitely did not take hairstyle inspiration from, is instantly iconic, and Fisher across the
08:48original trilogy and the sequel trilogy brought such heart to the galaxy far far away. Young Leia has been
08:55needed in other movies like Rogue One, but the Mouse House opted to use digital scans of Fisher
09:00rather than recast. 2. Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. Even though I've hypothesized over the qualities
09:07needed to decide whether or not an actor is irreplaceable, often it just comes down to basic
09:13maths. Yeah, it 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,
09:49Robert Downey Jr. absolutely knows this. When Tony Stark announced at the end of the first Iron Man that
09:55he was the superhero, that wasn't just a statement from the character, but also from the actor playing
10:01him. From there on, the two would become inseparable. And though the world of superheroes means there'll no
10:06doubt be another Tony Stark at some point, whoever takes the reins will always be living in the shadow
10:11of 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. But he remained
10:28a highlight of Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man trilogy because J.K. Simmons plays assholes like
10:33nobody else. He was so good in fact that when Sony rebooted the Spidey series, they omitted the
10:38character entirely rather than try to recast him, because Simmons' take was so entrenched in the
10:43minds of fans. Even when a second reboot came around, introducing a new genre was put off once
10:49again, 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
11:06already 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. J.K. is JJ, and fans will
11:18happily
11:18ignore a continuity blurring appearance to have both him and the character back for good.
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