Typecasting

Typecasting is a word that's thrown around the Hollywood industry quite often. It's defined as "the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character, one or more particular roles, or characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups." Many people try to claim it's not a real thing. They say it's just a stigma we place on actors who we don't want to see in certain movies. Well, typecasting isn't what we decide to think or believe, it's just something we have to accept to be a fact of acting life.

Think about it. Could you ever take a movie seriously if The Rock ever played a role like, I don't know, a tooth fairy? The ten actors in the video are some of the best examples for typecasting. With maybe one or two exceptions, none of them could ever be taken seriously in any other type of role. On of my personal favorite examples of typecasting I've recently seen has actually been discussed in a couple of my earlier posts. Charlie Day is an actor who's known for playing narrow-minded dimwits in productions such as It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Horrible Bosses. In his most recent project, Pacific Rim, he plays an incredibly intelligent scientist who manages to find a solution to an invasion of monsters from a different universe. Yeah, I laughed, too. It's absurd to even think about.

This wasn't supposed to be a particularly long post. Typecasting is a simple concept that people just don't often think about. Are there some actors who are able to escape the confines of typecasting and who go on to broaden there résumé? Yes. But many, many actors are often stuck in the same kind of role for the majority of their film careers.

Getting into Character

Acting can be very challenging to the actor and their body as far as getting into character. Many professional actors have to gain weight, lose weight, learn new skills, or many other strategies to get into character.

I have been in three real projects in college and I've tried my best to get into character. On the first shoot I was told that I needed to be depressed and had no other direction. So I worked my way into a depression. Two weeks later I needed to pretty much have the same thing for one of my own projects. This one was significantly more difficult. I listened to the most hope sapping songs I knew, slept less than I should, and ate less than I would have liked to. And the toughest part was I was really excited for the shoot, so being depressed was difficult.

The last shoot I did had a 4 am call time. Luckily I needed to be a zombie, so staying up all night made it easy. What made it difficult was that I started getting the loopy loops. Not only did not getting sleep take an impact on my health, but eating only unhealthy food, running around and other things just took a toll on me. I had a leadership retreat and had a film shoot later where I was crew, and everyone was entertained or annoyed with my lack of comprehension on social standards and comprehension.

Look I'm a zombie!