[Pirate]

I showed a friend of mine the trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is hitting cinemas in a few days. When the trailer ended, my friend made this comment: "that poor bastard. He’ll never work again." After I berated him for taking during the trailers, I paused the disc to ask him why he thought that. He gave me the Christopher Reeve Superman spiel. That got me thinking. Does typecasting still exist?

Think about it. Who was the last actor to get typecast after playing a major role? We still have issues with not letting comedians be anything but comedians (Chris Tucker), but I can’t think of someone who played a big role and then never worked again because they were offered nothing but. Will Brandon Routh never work again besides in Superman sequels? Will Hayden Christensen ever play anything buy angsty, asthmatic villains? Will Danny Radcliffe be nothing more than an equine-loving stage actor, never again to grace the silver screen as a non-magical being? I don’t think so.

I think audiences have (in some cases) matured beyond typecasting. Perhaps it was the initial cinematic wizardry that so solidified the actor in their perspective roles, but as amazing FX become more commonplace, perhaps the actor’s wardrobe are now less emblazoned in our minds. But, maybe I’ve wrong. Maybe Radcliffe will never be anything but our favorite bespectacled wand-waver. Maybe there are forms of typecasting left that I’m leaving out, but it seems that in today’s cinema, all one needs is to do an edgy independent film to break through or re-break through.

Whatcathink?