Same Actor/ Different Character(in name only)

[Christopher]

My first thought:

Ronny Cox in Robocop and again in Total Recall.

Which is ironic, since before RoboCop, Cox was typecast in nice-guy roles. So he kinda traded one typecast persona for another.

Still, that is just conventional typecasting, not an attempt to bring back the actual same character in a thinly disguised form.

 

[Hermiod]

^Yeah, that's really just Verhoeven casting one of his go-to guys in a role. That's not unusual for a director. Same reason he cast Ironside in Starship Troopers.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Of course you also get the *reverse* with, say, Lee Van Cleef in For A Few Dollars More and The Good The Bad And The Ugly...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I see this on the various Law & Order shows a lot. An actor will play two or three different judges, defense attorneys, etc., but otherwise act exactly the same in each, so there's no real reason why they have to be different characters.

 

[Greg Cox]

I see this on the various Law & Order shows a lot. An actor will play two or three different judges, defense attorneys, etc., but otherwise act exactly the same in each, so there's no real reason why they have to be different characters.

Possibly to avoid paying the writers of the original episodes?

 

[Dick Whitman]

Probably. I suspect as well that when the scripts for a show like that are first written, the writers have no idea whom will be available to be cast in the roles. So they don't gear the parts to a particular actor. Though actors do return to the show often.

I always liked to imagine that many of actors who returned to Sliders in different roles where the duplicates of their other characters. Even if the names appeared to be different. A number of variations in the histories could account for that.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I see this on the various Law & Order shows a lot. An actor will play two or three different judges, defense attorneys, etc., but otherwise act exactly the same in each, so there's no real reason why they have to be different characters.

Possibly to avoid paying the writers of the original episodes?

We're not talking about main characters here. Or even guests, really (it's rare that a defense attorney or judge has that important of a role to qualify them for such).

 

[Harvey]

True, but if they have the same name from a previous appearance, royalties must still be paid.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Others which come to mind:

Pierce Brosnan's charming gentlemen thieves in The Thomas Crown Affair and After The Sunset.

Roger Moore's James Bond and his character in The Cannonball Run

Michael Madsen's iconic Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs and his similarly psychotic, wise-cracking villain in The Getaway

Not quite on topic, but has anyone noticed how Tim Roth plays a character who's basically a human lie detector in Lie to Me, whereas he played a character able to beat real lie detectors in the movie Deceiver (released in the UK as Liar)? (it's an under-rated gem btw).

 

[DevilEyes]

James Sloyan plays every role exactly the same way. Especially his Trek appearances, but also on the X-Files.

So, you're saying that Alidar Jarok, Dr Mora, Alexander Roxhenko and Jetrel are practically the same character, except in name?

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

James Sloyan plays every role exactly the same way. Especially his Trek appearances, but also on the X-Files.

So, you're saying that Alidar Jarok, Dr Mora, Alexander Roxhenko and Jetrel are practically the same character, except in name?

They're played exactly the same way, same mannerisms, same speech patterns (except Alexander spits more). As an an actor, he certainly doesn't bury himself in the part.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Keanu Reeves has played Ted "Theodore" Logan in the following films:

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
Point Break
Speed
Bram Stoker's Dracula
The Matrix
Johnny Mnemonic
Chain Reaction
The Replacements
Sweet November

And many, many more!

 

[Christopher]

^Now, that's neither playing the same character nor being typecast. It's just having limited range. By that argument, you could say Bogart played Sam Spade in every film.

 

[Chaos Descending]

No, I have it on good authority that it's really just Ted "Theodore" Logan having fun time traveling and getting into adventures.

EDIT: <--- This indicates that I am being cheeky (and not meant to be taken seriously), and also that I edited it in, and it wasn't there when I first posted this post. (Hi Jenee! )

 

[Christopher]

But why would Ted need to be The One when he's already one of The Great Ones? And how do you reconcile the dystopian future of The Matrix with the utopia built on the teachings of Wyld Stallyns?

 

[Klaus]

Every Michelle Rodriguez role?

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Toshiro Mifune played Sanjuro, a wanderer who is implied to be secret agent, in the Kurosawa films Yojimbo and Sanjuro. He later played more or less the same character renamed Sassa in Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo. He again played a very similar character in Incident at Blood Pass. This time just refering to himself as "Yo" (a pretty clear reference to Yojimbo.) Although neither of the latter two films were directed by Kurosawa, many fans of Mifune's work consider them reprisals of the character Sanjuro (whose name was obviously an alias anyway). Though some see Sassa as more of an homage to Sanjuro.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Jean Reno's hitman Leon in The Professional/ Leon was created for him by writer-director Luc Besson, who decided that he wanted to see more of the character Victor the Cleaner/Le Nettoyer in La Femme Nikita, which Reno played.

Oddly enough, the role of Victor in the US remake, Nikita, aka Point of No Return, is played by Harvey Keitel whose role as Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction a year later is more than reminiscent of Victor the Cleaner.

Jean Reno also should have gotten a mention in Don Draper's other thread about playing the same character in 2 different continuities, as he starred in both the original French and US remake of Les Visiteurs/ The Visitors and Just Visiting.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Cheech Marin & Danny Trejo were killed off in Desperado only to be inexplicably resurrected in the sequel Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

In a late 1990s post-apocalyptic adaptation of Beowulf Christopher Lambert plays a mysterious immortal warrior with an indeterminate accent. It's almost exactly Connor MacLeod from Highlander but with different hair. In fact, were it not for Grendel & the other supernatural monsters, I'd be tempted to call Beowulf an honest-to-god Highlander sequel, albeit set in yet another alternate timeline, since it's impossible to reconcile Highlander II with Highlander: Endgame. (Although, now that I think about it, it's not totally impossible for the post-apocalyptic future in Beowulf to exist at some point in the future a few centuries after the events of Highlander II.)

 

[Dude]

I see this on the various Law & Order shows a lot. An actor will play two or three different judges, defense attorneys, etc., but otherwise act exactly the same in each, so there's no real reason why they have to be different characters.

Possibly to avoid paying the writers of the original episodes?

Nope, just out of actors...