history's most miscast role

The bad guy in the new Die Hard is roughly as threatening as a kitty with a broked paw.

good thread... i wish i could think of one now.

This thread should be revived when Valkyrie comes out.

lol i thought this was going to be about which historical figure has been most frequently miscast in movies about them

Well, I'm not sure what role he was in, but a recent stage version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest starred... Shane Richie.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51D3H6C4ZJL._AA280_.jpg

How about Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk, a (SPOILER!) black guy who passes as white in The Human Stain?

also featuring Donald Sutherland as British Sgt. Major Peasy and Nastassja Kinski as Joan Plowright's daughter.

xpost

House Of The Spirits (1993)

Meryl Streep ... Clara del Valle Trueba

Glenn Close ... Férula Trueba

Jeremy Irons ... Esteban Trueba

Winona Ryder ... Blanca Trueba

Tom Cruise as a PKD protagonist

x-post -- OTM.

Sabrina (1995)

Harrison Ford ... Linus Larrabee
Julia Ormond ... Sabrina Fairchild

O yeah I would definitely say Tom Cruise in the Kevin Costner role in 'The Last Samurai,' that's a good one. Can you buy him as a civil war maverick to any degree?

I was referring to Minority Report but Last Samurai is also a definite WTF absolutely

http://skyjude.users.btopenworld.com/Images/fieldofdreams04.jpg

(the wtfness of casting james earl jones as jd salinger and ray liotta as joe jackson is actually the reason why i love this movie though)

Tom Cruise as a PKD protagonist

More miscast than Arnold? (I haven't seen Minority Report.)

Billy Crystal ... First Gravedigger
Jack Lemmon ... Marcellus
Robin Williams ... Osric
Charlton Heston ... Player King
Alicia Silverstone ... The Princess of France
Matthew Lillard ... Longaville
Keanu Reeves ... Don John
Denzel Washington ... Don Pedro of Aragon
Robert Sean Leonard ... Claudio
Michael Keaton ... Dogberry

The guy from Hellraiser and Dirty Harry playing JFK in one of those old new "Twilight Zone" episodes.

x-post -- Kenneth Branagh, casting director!

Andrew Robinson! Holy shit! I have to hunt that down.

x-post re: scorpio as jfk

Gregory Peck - The Boys From Brazil

John Cusack IS German art dealer Max Rothman

Julia Roberts as "Julia Roberts" in Oceans 12.

Tom Cruise as a PKD protagonist

Still not as bad as Ron Kovic

Julia Roberts in anything kinda works for this thread

Ben Affleck as Daredevil

Kevin Costner as anything other than a baseball player

Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan!

Ben Affleck as Larry Gigli

I like how we're not just picking on Ben Affleck, those are all really good answers.

Ben was pretty good in that southpark episode though. Real authenticity.

Ben Affleck as Ben Affleck

http://www.lovefilm.com/lovefilm/images/products/7/9677-large.jpg

warren beatty as bugsy siegel.

kirk douglas as van gogh

jennifer love hewitt as audrey hepburn (iirc)

Chris O'Donnell as Ernest Hemingway

http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2005/09/20/inside-dvd-touch.jpg

Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas: This could be very bad for us.
Susan: For us?
Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas: For Mexico, I mean.

Keanu Reeves as Buddha

Luther Vandross as Georgia O'Keefe

Mexican Heston has got to make the top 5

Keanu Reeves in The Devil's Advocate

except that he's actually pretty good in the role (albeit not believable at all as a "Mexican")

I can't find a picture of Andrew Robinson as John F. Kennedy, but the episode was called Profile in Silver.

Billy Crystal ... First Gravedigger
Jack Lemmon ... Marcellus
Robin Williams ... Osric
Charlton Heston ... Player King

Ha ha we have a winner!

http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2005/09/20/inside-dvd-touch.jpghttp://www.cracked.com/img/articles/ferrell_front.jpg

Kirk Douglas is terrific as Van Gogh!

Lawrence Olivier - any of the old jews he played in the twilight of his career.

jacques dutronc owns his ass

xp: Heston as "Mexican" fits in to Welles' trademark "fake fake" quantum trickery

hmmmm

same goes for welles as othello?

You're right, he really is good in that role

http://www.planet-wissen.de/pics/IEPics/top_vampire_oldman.jpg
which of these two will win the love of...

http://winona-ryder.org/images/biography/06-dracula.jpg
her?

Mexican Heston OTM ("hablo de SPANISH?!").

sophia coppola, gf3?

keaton was worse in gf3 and you know it

Arnold Schwarzenegger as...

Joe Santo
John Matrix
Mark Kaminsky
Ben Richards
Julius Benedict
Douglas Quaid
John Kimble
Jack Slater
Harry Tasker
Dr. Alex Hesse
Howard Langston
Jericho Cane
Dr. Victor Fries
Adam Gibson
Gordy Brewer
Prince Hapi

(roles not included: Conan, Jon "The Eraser" Kruger, Dutch, Capt. Ivan Danko, Kalidor, The Terminator)

i remember chuck being good as the player king and keaton being good as dogberry, too

also i love the coppola dracula and i won't hear a word against it! except for winona because she's fucking horrible. and keanu.

Copolla Dracula is a real fun time, but yeah Keanu = ugh. Wynona also annoying in non-breast-baring role

i remember chuck being good as the player king

OTM.

Investigating a supernatural force, Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) finds himself on the toughest case of his career. With an archaeologist (Tara Reid) helping him to trace his findings back through time for centuries, the mystery only gets more complicated the further they delve into it.

kevin spacey in superman returns
jack black in king kong
michael gambon in the harry potter movies
mike myers in the cat in the hat
rob morrow in quiz show

This thread should be revived when Valkyrie comes out.

Cruise! Branagh! Izzard! 8080.

Christmas Jones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Christmas Jones is a fictional character from the James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough. She was portrayed by Denise Richards.

Relatively little is known about Dr. Christmas Jones; she is an American nuclear physicist working in Kazakhstan to dismantle nuclear warheads so as to reduce the Russian inventory in line with treaty obligations. A young and highly attractive woman with a penchant for wearing revealing and tight clothing (sometimes having to unbutton her pants when she eats), she attracts much gawking from men, something she dislikes. As a result, Christmas tends to be rather defensive and even aggressive towards the men she meets.

see also: Elisabeth Shue as Dr. Emma Russell in The Saint.

Kid reporter on Punk'd to Denise R: "How did it feel to play someone smart?"

her notes for the secret to cold fusion are hidden in her bra, and only master of disguise Val Kilmer can get to them!

x-post

TS: Alec Guinness as an Arab v. Alec Guinness as an Indian

Nicolas Cage as [NOT NULL].

Hayden Christiansen IS Stephen Glass, Bob Dylan AND Darth Vader!

has anyone ever been miscast as Andy Warhol? As long as they're skinny, bespectaled, wearing a white wig, muted and effete they can fit the bill.

bespectacled, rather

Has anyone mentioned John Wayne as Genghis Khan yet? Or as the centurion at the crucifixion in Greatest Story Ever Told?

Kevin Costner as anything other than a baseball player

Especially if sportin' a Bah-ston accent

Josh Harnett and Hilary Swank as a troubled detective and a femme fatale, respectively.

"Miss Gorightry I must protest!!"

It might be heresy to some of you, but just about anybody in a 90's Milos Foreman movie.

Norm MacDonald IS Michael Richards!

John Cusack IS Roman Polanski

http://www.dominomovie.com/downloads/wallpaper1_800.jpg

I dispute the one about Ahnuld casting. I think he's been pretty well cast in pretty much everything up to True Lies, and i've deliberately not seen him in anything after that(except for the Jackie Chan/Steve Coogan disney movie, and he looked weird in that).

I mean, he's not the mild-mannered cuckolded office cog of the original version of "Total Recall", but the role got adapted now, didn't it.

i disagree with all of mr snrub's choices

* kevin spacey is a perfect lex luthor - or at least comic book villain
* mike meyers is a perfect leading man for such an insulting pile of junk that was cat in the hat (and is also both childlike and indefinably perverse, which is what the cat in the hat is; i would have preferred, were it an actually GOOD movie, for the cat to have been played by someone like gene wilder or johnny depp or michael keaton)
* jack black as carny showman in over his head? who else??
* not seen the harry potter movies

all of these are arguable of course and i don't mean to pick on you, mr. snrub, but what's inarguable is that i don't think anything on this thread can hold a candle to:

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/51H7-RzUE4L._SS500_.jpg

keifer sutherland as PAUL GAUGUIN

xp: Dutch was rightfully removed from that list.

by the way, here is "the unofficial razor's edge film site":

http://www.theoldcorner.org.uk

i still remember asking my dad if i could go see this. he said welllll. i was like "but bill murray's in it!!" who knows, maybe it's good?

Kingfish, my point was more about the NAMES of Arnold's characters rather than the characters themselves. That's why I didn't include descriptions.

Arnold's not really a "Gordy" or a "Richards," though he is a "Kalidor."

True, but I get a kick out of the fact that when they were adapting Total Recall, they changed "Quail" into "Quaid".

Ronald Reagan as a Robert Taylor-esque martini-swilling playboy in Dark Victory.

Lawrence Olivier - any of the old jews he played in the twilight of his career.

olivier's shylock (in an otherwise lame production) is the best performance he ever gave.

Well, put him against The Boys From Brazil and Neil Diamond's dad in The Jazz Singer.

I liked that Sabrina remake.

Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly

Dr Who has been consistently miscast after Tom Baker.

Olivier is great in Boys From Brazil. I love how Gregory Peck is blissfully unaware how bad the movie is, while Olivier tries to make his role worthwhile anyway and James Mason hides behind the furniture, hoping you'll forget he was in it. He's too much in the Jazz Singer, though.

Didn't Kelsey Grammer do a George Washington biopic in recent years on TNT or something? I vote for that, based on the photographs in the print ads.

So did Jeff Daniels!

Mr. Show's John Ennis in Zodiac. Only had one scene, but I couldn't stop laughing.

After seeing David Cross' L&O:CI episode, I've been wishing he'd show up randomly in TV shows for bit parts, credited as Tobias Funke.

Polanski as Chris Tucker-taunting police officer?

http://www.hertsad.co.uk/content/whtimes/whatson/film/story.aspx?brand=WHTOnline&category=WhatsonFilms&tBrand=herts24&tCategory=whatsonfilmwht&itemid=WEED24%20Jul%202007%2012%3A05%3A08%3A357

Hayden Christiansen IS Stephen Glass

AND HE'S GOOD TOO

Norman Mailer as Harry Houdini. Although in fairness, the entire series is a giant WTF, and probably should be.

oh man, i completely forgot about kelsey grammer's macbeth, on broadway. i think it lasted for like two weeks.

haha it apparently lost 1.5 MILLION.

kelsey grammer's dark secrets vs macbeth's dark secrets fite!

Didn't Kelsey Grammer do a George Washington biopic in recent years on TNT or something? I vote for that, based on the photographs in the print ads.

I think he was Benedict Arnold, actually!

I saw the trailer for this in the theater a couple of times and could not control my laughter.

Oh no, you're right. The biopic was on Benedict Arnold, but Kelsey Grammer played Washington:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/519QTMC3CEL._AA240_.jpg

The sight of Frasier in a tri-cornered hat is still hilarious.

see, i sort of completely buy him as washington.

I think the problem is when you've played the same character for almost 20 years running, it's sort of hard to buy you in anything else, much less when you're going from a fussy, elitist sitcom shrink to a Founding Father in a costume drama.

He was a fine Beast.

Cousin Oliver as the boy who could save The Brady Bunch.

George Bush as president of America.

I saw a few minutes of this on TV and was nonplussed when I heard a Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about fighting the British:

Sylvester Stallone ... Paul Revere
Dustin Hoffman ... Benedict Arnold
Ben Stiller ... Thomas Jefferson
Billy Crystal ... John Adams
Michael Douglas ... Patrick Henry
Arnold Schwarzenegger ... Baron von Steuben

Animated, but still, wow. I wish I had seen more of this.

Edawrd G Robinson in the Ten Commandments

"Yeah see, who's your Pharoah now, see."

^ I made that up

Peter Lorre as Jack Tripper.

As okay as he was in it, I still don't know why Joel Grey was cast in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

I guess for the same reason that Vicki Lawrence played the lead character in "Mama's Family".

Hayden Christiansen IS Stephen Glass

AND HE'S GOOD TOO

Yeah, I was surprised by him in Shattered Glass, although it may have helped that the role was supposed to be whiny.

True, but I get a kick out of the fact that when they were adapting Total Recall, they changed "Quail" into "Quaid".

I bet they changed the name to avoid people thinking there was some weird subtext about Dan Quayle in the film. It would be like an action movie now where the lead character was named "Cheney." It'd just seem strange.

Not if the lead character shoots someone who criticizes him.

George Bush as president of America.

-- dean ge

hell yeah.

astounded it's taken this long!

http://www.movieactors.com/freezeframes-77/MaryPoppins45.jpeg

Mel Gibson as Macbeth.

Celia Imrie as a space fighter pilot person in Phantom Menace.

What's wrong with Dick van Dyke?

*people of England explode*

I thought he was fine in Nary Poppins. It's not like you'd expect realism for such a film.

Do you think French people are angry for Peter Sellers?

Lawks a mussy meeery poppuns

xpost they have every right to be

If only Guttenberg's attempt to become an action hero had succeeded

Gary Oldman as Count Dracula. Count Dracula should look patrician, not weasely.

Hoostery's most miscast role

Dick Van Dyke is totally charming!

The most miscast role of all time:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/67/200px-Katharinehepburnds.jpg
KATHERINE HEPBURN as JADE TAN in DRAGON SEED

Wasn't Gibson Hamlet?

Henry Gibson?

I was going to post this thread but it already exists. I think Mos Def as Ford Prefect in the HHGTTG film was totally off.

is tom cruise the most posted actor here?

Is he still playing the 6'5" jack reacher or has somebody copped on