What’s your type?: Typecasting an actor makes productions more entertaining

As viewers head to the theater with a bag full of buttered popcorn and a Coke, they sit back in the movie theater seats in a sort of trance as a new film unveils before their eyes. How is this actor so good at their job? They could nail any role I bet. Oftentimes, an actor or actress’s experience isn’t the reason their characters are so convincing. It’s typecasting that makes for such  a spot-on character.

Sometimes the casting agent is looking for a specific personality such as the easygoing, happy-go-lucky guys, but sometimes regular people inspire a new character in the story. Not everyone who ends up being typecast is inexperienced, many are trained actors that might just happen to be waiting on an uber in hollywood.

With typecasting, actors are playing a role similar to their personality. You aren’t watching them pretend to be someone else — they are simply being themselves. It’s the most authentic kind of acting. 

Watching a story play out on a screen where it seems as though the whole cast is just reading off a script is disappointing to say the least, but typecasting gets rid of that.

Take Hollywood star Angus Cloud for example. Cloud is best known for his role as Fezco in the HBO series “Euphoria.” — Fezco is known to be laid back and kind-hearted with an urban fashion style.

According to myimperfectlife.com, prior to working with Euphoria, he had no acting experience and was simply waiting tables at a Chicken-And-Waffles restaurant in New York. Walking through Manhattan one day, a casting agent stopped him on the street asking him to audition for the show. On a whim, Cloud agreed on a whim and showed up to the audition for what he deemed a random show.   Such as in this case, it’s hard to tell the difference between him and his role.

Another example is actress Bria Vinaete cast as Halley  in “The Florida Project.” Director Sean Baker discovered a video of Vinaite on a trampoline via Instagram and thought she would be the perfect fit for one of his characters. She had no acting experience at the time, but Baker knew her personality encapsulated what he was looking for, and the movie became a hit across America in 2017. This bold casting choice made the movie so much more authentic and seeing an unfamiliar face was refreshing.

Lots of times the public assumes that all of the A-list actors planned on that being their career all along, but type-casted actors can become world renowned.

“Pirates Of The Caribbean” star Johnny Depp is an example of this. Shockingly, Depp never originally intended to pursue acting. According to actoncamera.com, Depp was Jack Earle Haley’s plus-one at the “Nightmare On Elm Street ” audition. Haley was auditioning for the role of Glen when Director Wes Craven noticed Depp — who he thought would capture the performance of Glen more convincingly than Haley could. Depp got the part and is now a world-renowned actor with 15 people’s choice awards.

What makes typecasting so magical is how it gives movies the opportunity to really draw you in and believe in what you’re watching.

 Actors can get burnt out just like any other job, but playing a role that is so similar to themselves reduces the stress. Another plus is that when the actor truly understands their character on a deeper level, they are able to expand and add their own experiences into the production. Actors who are similar to their characters are much more genuine than actors who play roles that they cannot relate to. It also gives unfamiliar faces a chance to inspire their audience and to bring singularity to the table.

The next time you’re sitting down to binge your favorite Netflix series for the hundredth time, take notice of the authentic personalities on screen. Thanks to the practice of typecasting, the next big actor on your TV could be an ordinary person, too.