Genre Typecasting of Actors

Students to print out and add to their folders – This relates to representation

The evaluation questions that this post relates to are:

 
How did you attract/address your audience?

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Task: From our lesson outline in your own post the key points regarding typecasting of actors. Use your own images/links to related articles etc.

In TV and film, typecasting is 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. In some cases there has been situations where the actor has been so strongly identified with a role that it makes it difficult for him or her to find work playing other characters.

However, an alternate situation is where a director may choose to cast an actor 'Against type', for example a role that would be unusual for that actor, to create a comedic or dramatic effect.

Examples of characters playing against the type:

A prime example of this is Robert de Niro in Scorcese’s ‘The King of Comedy’. De Niro is most commonly known for playing the role of the ‘tough guy’ and so this was a big step away from how he used to be typecast.

Tom Cruise is known to act in a lot of thriller films, he is usually portrayed as the protagonist. This can be seen in the film Jack Reacher (2012), which is an American thriller film about a homicide investigator who digs into a case involving a trained military sniper who has shot five random victims. Tom Cruise has also starred in other thriller films such as 'Risky Business' and 'Rain Man'.

There are various benefits of typecasting actors such as audiences being drawn to see a film because their favourite actor plays a key role. This in turn will benefit the producers, as it can attract more audiences.

However, typecasting can restrict actors because audiences may find it hard to associate with them in very different roles, as a rule they become limited in the work they can get and restricted in their development as an actor. Quentin Tarantino resurrected John Travolta’s career after years of no work by casting him out of character in his films Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Differentiation
It could be argued that females are typecast more than men, why do you think this might be?