Typecasting

Abstract

FOR AN ACTOR, what could be worse than to have one's work dismissed as typecasting? Critics and audiences alike tend to castigate those who play to type, as if playing to type indicates that the actor lacks talent and can't play anything else, or somehow created a role without effort, and therefore didn't act at all, or, in fitting her performance to a known type, failed to create anything original. Alternately, in acknowledging that an actor is well suited to a role because the role fits his type, we damn the actor with faint praise, or, sometimes, express our admiration for the actor who manages to create the seeming oxymoron of a "unique type."