Advice for Actors: Typecasting? Play to Your Strengths

You do a great performance - there's a standing ovation, people come up to you and say how great you were, you feel ecstatic - and then the requests come for you to play a similar character in a similar production in a similar way. You're flattered by the interest but feel boxed in by the roles that you are offered - you want to show your range, how great you can be. Typecasting? It feels restrictive. But in this blog, I advise you to battle that urge for change and play to your strengths.

Let's face it, all actors are typecast. By this, I mean that you are given the same roles to play over and over again - the villain, the comic, the romantic. It's a culmination of our past (successful) roles and our appearance. We are told not to judge a book by its cover, but we inevitably do.

From Jason Statham and Liam Neeson as the hard man, to Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn as the classy love interest. Even the greats are typecast.

Jason Statham is always typecast as a "Hard Man" - Does he care? No.

Remember, then, that being typecast means that you are great! You are so good at something that you stand out. Would you rather that or blend in elsewhere simply for the sake of avoiding being typecasted?

Casting directors are looking for YOU in your character. They want to see the unique edge that YOU bring through your style, look, mannerisms. We are all individual. All different. Acting is about using your individuality to bring a character to life. It's a form of self-control - self-curation. Each of us is naturally good at presenting different emotions, ideas, or behaviours based on our own personality and upbringing. Find the one thing that only YOU can do. Use it!

With reflection, I'm typecast. I often play the comic or the introspective type - or in the case of Clutching at Straws, both in one. When I look back on my performances, I find this funny: I'm quite often a shy or quiet character, and I am not shy or quiet in real life. But I can be introspective, a little mysterious, on days where my social battery needs recharging.

I was working with the Young Pleasance Company last week in R&D for our Edinburgh Fringe show this summer, and the two roles that I was repeatedly told to read for were the grumpy comic relief (a Scotsman, no less) and the malicious but soft-spoken villain - the morally grey figure, like The Waiter in The Unspoken.

This doesn't bother me. In fact, I know that it means I do those parts well. It's probably because I consumed a lot of comedy as a child (Mr. Bean, particularly), and am probably more than a little deranged. I know where my strengths lie.

Of course, I could focus on improving my weaknesses, but - and this will be quite controversial - I don't want to try to become a Jack-of-all-trades when I can be a master at one (or two.) Focussing on what you are good at makes you great at it. Typecasting? Play to your strengths. Spreading yourself too thin to try and master everything will most likely end in you merging into obscurity - but by all means, prove me wrong.

I was speaking to a fellow actor about this, and he dislikes being typecast as the villain - but he is great at it! He has deliberately stopped auditioning for such roles to broaden his horizons. This is okay in the experimental field of University - failing to get a role is not the difference between paying the rent and being homeless. In life, however, you may need to lean heavier on your typecast - at least in the beginning.

My typecast spectrum (as I call it - being at one extreme to the next) puts me in a privileged position of having these two extremes to play with. Others aren't so lucky.

You hear of the actors who are tired of being cast as taxi drivers or shopkeepers, police officers or creepy villains. They are the unfortunate victims of both typecast and stereotype. Unfortunately, these are entwined - as is any person's first impression of you. It is very hard to change that. But what you can do is embrace your typecast - make it a unique interpretation, a memorable one, a great one!

Don't deny what you are great at - or what people perceive you as! Play along, and sit there smiling to yourself about how little they really know.

Typecasting? Play to your strengths.