When actors and actresses play a certain style of character or type of role on a regular basis, or perhaps even once just very successfully, they run the risk of being typecast by Hollywood, and from then on only receiving offers similar to that part. Some have fully embraced typecasting because they’re only interested in one kind of role anyway, while others do their best to avoid it by always carefully selecting new or different roles which means they are less likely to be pigeonholed in the future. Here is what 5 actors/actresses have to say on being typecast.
Daniel Radcliffe
Daniel knows he will always be seen as Harry Potter, but thinks he can also be other characters without problems: “A lot of people will be generous and open-minded enough to see me as other people. But I think that to a lot of people I will always be Harry. However, there’s one thing that might work in my favour, and that’s that I’m still going to change so much, I hope. You know, people say to me, ‘Are you worried about being typecast?’ – I’ve got to say no. I haven’t been so far, so I don’t know why I should in the future.”
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett believes she has avoided typecasting by selecting completely different roles every time: “I’ve played so many different roles, from a high school student to a wife, to a 17th century Dutch maid, to trailer trash. For a while, I thought I might get typecast as the bitter, sh**ty teenager who’s always sarcastic, but luckily that fear was never a reality.”
Michelle Rodriguez
Michelle says she likes to be typecast because she is only interested in a certain type of character: “My entire career is made up of those girl-power moments. I don’t mind typecasting because I know what the alternative is. I’m trying to create roles that are the perfect balance between man and woman. The scripts are all butch b****es, all dyked out, way too hardcore – but y’know, if it’s that or sucking some guy’s c**k in a movie, then give me the gun, honey!”
Jessica Alba
Jessica says she is often offered sexy roles, which aren’t what she is interested in for the most part: “The scripts I get are always for the whore, or the motorcycle chick in leather, or the horny maid. I get all those screenplays that start, ‘Tawnya is in the shower. The water streams down her naked, perky breasts.’ Somehow, I don’t think this is happening to Natalie Portman.”
Gemma Arterton
Gemma worried she would forever be typecast for playing period drama characters, but luckily she has managed to shake that notion off and gets other role offers: “I feel so lucky. I always thought I’d be in period dramas playing downtrodden girls in love. I read so many scripts and they’re all the same: either the character is just someone to be in the background or they’re there to help the man, to be the love interest like I’ve done in ‘Prince of Persia’ or ‘Clash of the Titans’. What I want to do is find characters who are the focus. Sexy and real women, not perfect. Not pin-ups.”
