Same Actor/Character in Different Continuities

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ That just made me think...if they rebooted Airplane!, they could have Belzer play Lloyd Bridges' old role.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!"

 

[Greg Cox]

The flip side here is actors who play multiple roles in the same series. Like Boris Karloff, who played the Monster in the first three Universal FRANKENSTEIN flicks, but played a mad scientist in one of the later films in the series.

Those old FRANKENSTEIN films did this a lot. Bela Lugosi was Ygor in the third and fourth films, but played the Monster himself in the fifth one. And Lon Chaney Jr. played the Monster in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, but played the Wolf Man in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN.

It was like a game of musical chairs.

 

[Kegg]

The flip side here is actors who play multiple roles in the same series.

Albeit this is extremely common when concerned with any franchise that goes into TV, and regarding minor roles in general. The amount of actors who have played more than two roles on Star Trek is as long as the day; one example that immediately springs to mind is Diana Muldaur for her two guest roles in the original series and her recurring role in the Next Generation's second season.

An interesting example for me would be Sanjuro, a sequel to Yojimbo where once again Tatsuya Nakadai plays one of the primary villains (though he has a bigger role in Sanjuro.)

 

[Christopher]

Here's one: In 1981, Henry Darrow did the voice of Don Diego de la Vega, aka Zorro, in Filmation's The New Adventures of Zorro. Two years later, he reprised the role in live action in the very short-lived sitcom Zorro and Son, in which the aging Don Diego attempted to train his bumbling son to take over as Zorro.* Seven years after that, he appeared in the latter three seasons of The Family Channel's Zorro as Don Diego's father, reversing the family relationship!


*Between Zorro and Son, Zorro: The Gay Blade, and the Antonio Banderas/Anthony Hopkins movies, it's surprising how many Zorro stories are about the original Zorro training a replacement.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

The flip side here is actors who play multiple roles in the same series.

Albeit this is extremely common when concerned with any franchise that goes into TV, and regarding minor roles in general. The amount of actors who have played more than two roles on Star Trek is as long as the day; one example that immediately springs to mind is Diana Muldaur for her two guest roles in the original series and her recurring role in the Next Generation's second season.

An interesting example for me would be Sanjuro, a sequel to Yojimbo where once again Tatsuya Nakadai plays one of the primary villains (though he has a bigger role in Sanjuro.)

Kurosawa always used the same actors; the same with Spike Lee...Martin Scorsese....Woody Allen....etc....

...But they aren't in the same continuity..(Unless we add a sci-fi element to it...)

 

[Dick Whitman]

Venturing into history, what about Peter O'Toole, who played Henry II in both THE LION IN THE WINTER and BECKETT? Do fictionalized versions of actual historical personages have their own continuities?

umm considering this is my little party I make the rules right???...

Then yes, absolutely! Most of the historical figures who poped up on Quantum Leap were played by actors who had done so previously.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Here's one: In 1981, Henry Darrow did the voice of Don Diego de la Vega, aka Zorro, in Filmation's The New Adventures of Zorro. Two years later, he reprised the role in live action in the very short-lived sitcom Zorro and Son, in which the aging Don Diego attempted to train his bumbling son to take over as Zorro.* Seven years after that, he appeared in the latter three seasons of The Family Channel's Zorro as Don Diego's father, reversing the family relationship!

In fact an episode of the Family Channel series played up Darrow's history with Zorro. Don Diego's father get's amnesia and stumbles on to Zorro's lair. He believes he himself IS Zorro. Dressing up in the costume and rides out as Zorro!

Mark Hamill as the Trickster

The live action series "The Flash" and later in a JLU episode.

 

[Stevil2001]

Ooh-- and Mark Hamill as the voice of the Joker in both the Batman cartoon and Birds of Prey.

 

[Christopher]

Mark Hamill as the Trickster

The live action series "The Flash" and later in a JLU episode.

Personally, I don't consider those separate continuities. The Flash had the same kind of "Dark Deco" retro-modern aesthetic as B:TAS (and the same composer, Shirley Walker), so I think of it as part of the DCAU. The appearance of the Hamill Trickster in JLU, even with the same look, just verifies it for me.

(Yes, The Flash does have a scene referring to Superman and Batman movies and a line jokingly referring to a reporter as "Lois Lane," but then, a first-season Static Shock episode has the characters referring to Clark Kent as a fictional character, but that show was later folded into the DCAU. And an S:TAS episode has Lois saying "Yeah, and I'm Wonder Woman" years before JL shows Wonder Woman's debut. So the continuity issues with The Flash vs. the DCAU are no greater than those.)

 

[Dick Whitman]

Works for me! I remember you posting something similar when that episode first aired.

I was HUGE fan of The Flash. In fact my first memory of B:TAS was being excited to learn Mark Hamill would be voicing the Joker because he had played The Trickster. Also for all its other merits Shirley Walker providing the score for Batman first sold it for me because of the similar feel to The Flash.

 

[Captaindemotion]

David E. Kelley's tv shows are probably worth a mention here:

In The Practice, James Spader & William Shatner played Alan Shore and Denny Crane, roles they would later play in Boston Legal. However, The Practice's gritty (for a Kelley show) take on the legal world is some way removed from BL's very whimsical shenannigans. While I never saw any of their episodes of The Practice, I understand that their characters were very different from how they were in BL.

Additionally, John Larroquette had appeared in TP as a killer but later appeared in BL as a Carl Sack, a lawyer in Crane, Poole Schmidt, with no reference to the resemblance.

Chi McBride from Kelley's Boston Public appeared in Legal as his headmaster character Steven Harper. However, two other series regular actors from Public, Anthony Heald and Jeri Ryan, later appeared in BL as entirely different characters. Indeed, I think Kelley missed a trick here, as Heald's BP character had referred to his brother being a lawyer. Heald played a judge in BL - had they given him the same surname as his BP character, fans could have assumed that the brother had gone to the bench.

The Practice (Dylan McDermott era) had once crossed-over with Kelley's Ally McBeal, like Boston Legal, a much more fluffy take on the legal world, but even more so with its flights of fantasy and ghost characters. Two different continuities? Compounded by the fact that a regular Ally cast member, Peter McNicol, later turned up on Boston Legal as a different character. This was quite a shame as his McBeal character John Cage would have fitted in very well with Denny and Alan. Other recurring Ally actors like Armin Shimerman also appeared in Boston Legal but as different characters. Again, this was a shame, as both shows were set in Boston's legal world and both could easily have co-existed in the same universe.

Indeed, given that William Shatner's TJ Hooker inexplicably relocated for one season to Chicago, then back to LA with no subsequent mention of his sojourn there, this might also fit the bill. When you add in Star Trek: TAS, perhaps the Shat should get an award for playing three separate characters multiple times in different contintuities!

 

[Dick Whitman]

The voice of the Robot in the Lost in Space movie was the same as in the original tv series.

 

[DevilEyes]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Richard Belzer portray John Munch on 'Homicide' then on 'Law and Order: SVU'?

I think those shows exist in the same continuity. Kind of like the old "Murder She Wrote"/"Magnum P.I."/"Simon and Simon" crossovers.

Definitely, since Munch is not the only crossover character. L&O and H:LOTS had a bunch of crossovers, with Chris Noth/Mike Logan appearing on an early episode of Homicide, and subsequent 3 stories being started on Law and Order and continued on Homicide, with detectives from both shows working together on cases.

 

[Captaindemotion]

As this thread was inspired by the new Superman movie and the possibility of Routh returning, here's a few Superman castings that 'got away':

Brandon Routh auditioned for Smallville before playing Superman in SR. The actor who played the lead in Superboy auditioned for Lois and Clark but the producers wouldn't cast him as they didn't want L&C to be confused with any other take on Superman. And it was widely rumoured at one stage that WB were pressurising Bryan Singer to cast Tom Welling in SR. Also, Kevin Spacey played Lex Luthor in that movie but was also supposed to play the role in what would have been Tim Burton's very different take on the mythos in Superman Lives (which was rumoured to feature a cameo for Michael Keaton as Batman, even though he'd by then been replaced on the big screen).

 

[Dick Whitman]

Also Sherman Howard who played Lex Luthor on Superboy auditioned to voice Lex on S:TAS. It was between him and Clancy Brown who got the role.

 

[Christopher]

Also Sherman Howard who played Lex Luthor on Superboy auditioned to voice Lex on S:TAS. It was between him and Clancy Brown who got the role.

And Howard then went on to play a Luthor-like character in Batman Beyond, a character that I believe was created specifically for him to compensate him for not getting to play Lex, or something like that.

 

[WillsBabe]

I haven't read the remainder of the thread so this could already have been mentioned: Doug McClure as Trampas on The Men from Shilhoe and The Virginian.

 

[Kegg]

Kurosawa always used the same actors; the same with Spike Lee...Martin Scorsese....Woody Allen....etc....

...But they aren't in the same continuity..(Unless we add a sci-fi element to it...)

Sanjuro is a direct sequel to Yojimbo; chiefly because it has Toshiro Mifune reprising the same character he played in Yojimbo. So it's pretty clearly in the same continuity, even if the film regards that as fairly flexible.

 

[Christopher]

Can't believe I forgot this one -- Gary Burghoff as Radar in the film MASH and the TV series M*A*S*H, which were distinctly different realities. (Not to mention that the show itself occupied an ever-shifting continuity and chronology.) Also, G. Wood played General Hammond in both the movie and the first season of the series.


Let's see, going through Wikipedia's category page for TV shows based on films:

Stargate SG-1 has discrepancies from the movie's continuity (O'Neill's name is spelled differently, I think his son had a different name, the nature of the alien symbiotes is changed, Catherine Langford has a different accent, etc.), but Erick Avari and Alexis Cruz reprised their Abydonian characters from the film.

Borderline case: The TV series Alien Nation was a slightly different continuity from the movie it was based on (there were differences in the aliens' anatomy and backstory, and I think Sikes in the movie became Sykes in the show), but its pilot incorporated footage of Roger Aaron Brown's character from the film as flashback scenes. It doesn't quite count because Brown didn't actually film any new material as Bill Tuggle for the series; it was exclusively stock footage. Still, the character of Tuggle did exist in the series' continuity and was in a sense "played" by the same actor.

The Odd Couple as a TV series was slightly discontinuous with the play and movie (Felix has a different job, a differently-spelled surname, and a different wife and Oscar has a different child), but the same actresses (Monica Evans and Carole Shelley) played the Pigeon Sisters in all three incarnations.

The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes animated series had John Astin reprising his role as the "angry scientist" Gangreen from the movie sequels (a character not in the original film). It's a distinct continuity because the male and female leads from Return of the Killer Tomatoes are reimagined as younger (and distinctly less horny) characters. Also, Gangreen's first name is Mortimer in the films and Putrid in the show.

The animated Men in Black: The Series was somewhat discontinuous with the film (same basic backstory, but K didn't retire and L was a more veteran agent than J), but Tony Shalhoub reprised the role of Jeebs (initially, with Billy West later replacing him) and Vincent D'Onofrio returned as Edgar the Bug (apparently still alive, another discrepancy) and his entire family.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

True, but Belzer also played Munch on "The X-Files" and on "The Wire." You'll have a hard time reconciling those continuities with the "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Law & Order" universe.

He also arguably played the same character in a brief cameo for The Wire.

Pick a hell of a day to quit drinking?

Eh, oh well. It was worth saying twice.