Movie Film Trivia

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emuboy said:
In Scream 4 in 2011, the character Jill Roberts was played by actress Emma Roberts.

Actors who play characters with the same first name are reasonably common. Tony Danza often played characters called Tony during his career, and Charlie Sheen played Charlie Harper on Two and A Half Man. Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm is of course playing a fictionalized version of himself, but there's also Cheryl David (played by Cheryl Hines), Jeff Green (played by Jeff Garlin) and Susie Green (played by Susie Essman). There's also the 1970s British sitcom Bless This House, where Sid James played Sid Abbott and Sally Geeson played the daughter Sally Abbott, however the wife, son and neighbors were all portrayed by actors with different names than their characters.

However, unless actors are playing themselves or fictionalized versions of themselves (like Matt LeBlanc from Episodes or Drew Carey from The Drew Carey Show), its much rarer to find an actor playing a character with the same surname, either on TV or in movies. I can't think of any other examples other than Emma Roberts playing Jill Roberts, can you think of any more?
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Andrea Parker played Miss Parker / Catherine Parker in one of my favourite late 90s show THE PRETENDER

I named my son after the lead character (Jarod)
 
In relation to the above post, the previous two pages of this thread have contained instances of actors and actresses playing a character who shares their surname (on TV or in movies) or playing characters with the same surname in two different films.

How about this:
In the 2018 movie The Old Man and The Gun, Robert Redford plays a character named Forrest Tucker. There was of course a real-life actor named Forrest Tucker who is best known for appearing in the sitcom F Troop. Has anybody else played a character whose name was the same as that of a real-life actor/actress? (Ignoring biopics)
 
worbod said:
In relation to the above post, the previous two pages of this thread have contained instances of actors and actresses playing a character who shares their surname (on TV or in movies) or playing characters with the same surname in two different films.

How about this:
In the 2018 movie The Old Man and The Gun, Robert Redford plays a character named Forrest Tucker. There was of course a real-life actor named Forrest Tucker who is best known for appearing in the sitcom F Troop. Has anybody else played a character whose name was the same as that of a real-life actor/actress? (Ignoring biopics)
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Does Tom Hardy playing Charles Bronson count?

He played the criminal Bronson, who renamed himself after the actor Bronson.
 

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On the names theme here are four Australian cricketers who share names with actors or characters.

Dean Jones - Victorian batsman & US actor best known for the Herbie movies.

DJ1.jpg & DEan Jones kk...jpg


David Warner - NSW batsmen & British actor who played the bad guy in Tron. (Crickets Dave was probably the biggest bad guy though :)
DW1.jpg & DW2.jpg

James Faulkner - Tasmanian all-rounder & British character actor who was in Atomic Blonde, Game Of Thrones & Slow Horses (& the inspiration for this post)
JFC.jpg & JFA.jpg

Steve Smith - NSW batsmen & a character on TVs American Dad. (With Steve Smith being such a common name their are a lot of notable people with it)
SSC.jpg & SSAD.jpg
 
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Predator35 said:
JFK assassin?
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Who knows? (Probably never)

The guy was a drug fiend who would frequently speak and act irrationally under the influence. Under the influence, he once mentioned being a part of that assasination, so you take his claims with a grain of salt.

However you can't discount it given his connections and history. There is also the case of Larry Hall, the subject of the excellent mini series Black Bird, who would admit, then deny to murders just to **** with investigators.
 
worbod said:
In relation to the above post, the previous two pages of this thread have contained instances of actors and actresses playing a character who shares their surname (on TV or in movies) or playing characters with the same surname in two different films.

How about this:
In the 2018 movie The Old Man and The Gun, Robert Redford plays a character named Forrest Tucker. There was of course a real-life actor named Forrest Tucker who is best known for appearing in the sitcom F Troop. Has anybody else played a character whose name was the same as that of a real-life actor/actress? (Ignoring biopics)
Click to expand...

Mentioning Home and Away in my previous post reminded me that Emily Symons has played Marilyn Chambers on that Soapie. In fact Emily has left the soap and returned for more action as Marilyn a number of times, as the real Marilyn often did in her movies.
 
Casting adults well into their 20s (and in some cases 30s) to play teenagers is nothing new and is often referred to as 'Dawson's Creek Casting'. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it looks ridiculous, like some of these new teen dramas seen on Netflix in recent years.

One interesting case of this not involving teenagers was that of Sandra Bullock in the Miss Congeniality films of the 2000s. In the original 2000 film, the FBI were looking for a female agent aged in her 20s who could infiltrate the Miss United States Pageant, and the only one in the age range who could go undercover in this role was Gracie Hart, played by Sandra Bullock. A flashback to 1982 at the start of the movie shows Gracie as a girl aged about 7 or 8, which would make her born around 1974 or 1975 and mid 20s by the early 2000s. In real life, Sandra Bullock was born in 1964, so was about 10 years older than the character she was playing.

This didn't stand out too much in the first film, except maybe when you see her with the Rhode Island contestant Cheryl played by a young-looking Heather Burns who was born in 1975. Plus it was a pretty well-liked and engaging action comedy/crime movie so few people would probably notice this small detail while watching the film. However, things didn't go so well in the poorly received sequel 'Miss Congeniality 2' made a full 5 years later in 2005. The strange thing about this movie is that despite the passage of quite some time in real life, only several months had passed on-screen between the original and its sequel, which meant that Bullock was now aged in her early 40s and playing a woman in her mid 20s. That the world had changed significantly between 2000 and 2005 was another factor that made this look jarring and out of place.
 
George Clooney jumped to stardom via his role as Dr. Doug Ross in the drama ER (1994-), set - unsurprisingly - in a hospital emergency department.

But how many people know that his first major(ish) role was in a sitcom (1984-85) that co-starred Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame, also in his first major(ish) role. The name of this sitcom was E/R, set - unsurprisingly - in a hospital emergency department.
 
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In 1999 and 2000, Charlie O'Connell appeared in movies with the two actresses who played the two different versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The 1999 film was Cruel Intentions with Sarah Michelle Gellar who played the TV version of Buffy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and in 2000 he starred in Dude Where's My Car? alongside Kristy Swanson who played the original Buffy in the 1992 movie.

Charlie O'Connell's brother Jerry O'Connell also appeared in a movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar - Scream 2 in 1997 - but I couldn't see him having acted with Kristy Swanson in any movies or TV shows.
 
In quite a number of Adam Sandler movies from the late 1990s and early 2000s, his character had love interests whose names started with V.

There was Veronica Vaughan (Bridgette Wilson) in Billy Madison from 1995, Virginia Venit (Julie Bowen) from Happy Gilmore in 1996, Vicki Vallencourt (Fairuza Bulk) from The Waterboy in 1998 and Valerie Veran (Patricia Arquette) in Little Nicky from 2000. In Big Daddy from 1999 Sonny's fed-up girlfriend who dumps him early in the film is named Vanessa (played by Kristy Swanson), while years later in 2015 Sandler's character's love interest in Pixels is named Violet (played by Michelle Monaghan).

Another interesting thing with names in early Sandler films is that in Billy Madison the character of Mr. Madison (Billy's father) is played by the late Darren McGavin, while in Happy Gilmore the next year the name of the film's main antagonist is Shooter McGavin (played by Christopher McDonald).
 

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TIL this is not Zach Galifinakis but in actual fact Robert Redford from Jeremiah Johnson. I’m shook, I know all the smarties on this site will say of course and I knew that all along. Why didn’t someone tell me
 
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troybe said:
View attachment 1584816

TIL this is not Zach Galifinakis but in actual fact Robert Redford from Jeremiah Jones. I’m shoo, I know all the snarties on this site will say of course and I knew that all along. Why didn’t someone tell me
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Kong said:
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
A 70s adventure film set in the Rocky Mountains during the late 1800s, starring Robert Redford. A decent watch, especially if you enjoy films like The Revenant. Potentially most well known for the Jeremiah Johnson nodding GIF (you'd know it if you saw it).
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You’re welcome.
 
If you are producing a movie or TV show that contains a character who is a really bad singer, what is the best strategy? It might sound odd but cast an actor to play the character who can sing well in real life.

For example in Dirty Dancing Baby's dim-witted older sister Lisa performs a song called "Hula Hana' at the talent show, oblivious to the fact that she is tone deaf. Jane Brucker, the actress who played Lisa, is in real life very talented musically, and wrote Hula Hana herself (which surprised me as I thought that it was an obscure one hit wonder from the early 1960s when the movie is set).

The late Jean Hagen, who played Lina Lamont in classic 1952 musical 'Singin In The Rain' did not have a song in the film unlike in the stage version, but the character's speaking voice - a shrill, whining, grating New York accent - suggests that her attempting to sing would be even worse. Off-screen Jean Hagen sounded nothing like her most famous character Lina Lamont, she had a cultured American accent, and could also sing.

On the small screen, Hyacinth Bucket from early 1990s British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances drove her musician neighbor Emmett insane by appearing and singing at him. Hyacinth was an appalling singer and completely tone deaf, but the same isn't true of the actress who played her, with Patricia Routledge a classically trained singer. The bumbling Frank Spencer to be fair was more a flat singer than a really bad singer and the things that went wrong were more physical accidents during a disastrous attempt by Frank to audition as an entertainer at a holiday camp in Some Mothers Do Ave 'Em, while the actor who portrayed him Michael Crawford is an expert singer and musical performer who was in Phantom Of The Opera for some time.

In Glee in the early 2010s the policy of the high school Glee club was that anyone who auditioned got in, but an exception had to be made when a somewhat obnoxious student named Sugar Motta tried out, and her singing was so bad that she simply could not be admitted. The actress playing her, Vanessa Lengies, is an accomplished singer and dancer.

One very amusing case was a Christmas episode of sitcom Becker in the late 1990s/early 2000s, where competent practice nurse Margaret invites ditzy receptionist Linda to join in with her Christmas choir who perform for the elderly/ill/poor over the festive season, in the hope of making the girl less selfish and self-absorbed and see the value of helping others. Linda absolutely loves the choir and as it turns out sees the value in helping the less fortunate, but there is a major problem - Linda is a shockingly bad singer and cannot see how bad she is, causing a major issue for Mary. Off screen the actress who played Linda, Shawnee Smith, is a very talented musician and vocalist. In the 1990s she fronted and toured globally with a rock group called Fydolla Ho, and more recently was part of a country music duo Smith and Pyle with actress Missi Pyle.

An interesting inversion of this was in the 1960s sitcom Gilligan's Island, where a number of episodes featured the characters singing. Bob Denver, Jim Baccus, Natalie Schaeffer, Alan Hale, Russell Johnson and Tina Louise could all sing well enough so there was no problem for these actors, but despite being a talented actress and dancer, Dawn Wells (Mary-Ann) wasn't the triple-threat and by her own admission was a terrible singer. Another actress dubbed Wells' singing voice in these musical episodes.
 
The debut novel of horror writer Stephen King was Carrie in 1974, which unusually for a work outside the science fiction genre had a then-futuristic setting of 1979 and of course in Maine. King had concerns about whether it would be accepted for publication, but the publishers Doubleday took a chance on the young unknown writer's work and published it and were glad they did as it turned out to be an international bestseller.

Nearly 40 years later in the Carrie remake of 2013 with Chloe Grace Moretz in the titular role, the role of the vile school bully Christine was played by actress Portia Doubleday.
 
emuboy said:
The debut novel of horror writer Stephen King was Carrie in 1974, which unusually for a work outside the science fiction genre had a then-futuristic setting of 1979 and of course in Maine. King had concerns about whether it would be accepted for publication, but the publishers Doubleday took a chance on the young unknown writer's work and published it and were glad they did as it turned out to be an international bestseller.

Nearly 40 years later in the Carrie remake of 2013 with Chloe Grace Moretz in the titular role, the role of the vile school bully Christine was played by actress Portia Doubleday.
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Any relation to the publishing house?
 
Sticking with the horror theme, John Carpenter's In The Mouth Of Madness (1994) concerns an insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) who is tasked with locating horror writer Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). Cane may or may not be Stephen King - it's a bit meta. The plot is difficult to describe, but basically concerns Trent's descent into insanity.



In one scene, Trent encounters a young paperboy on a country road. That boy would become famous - or perhaps infamous - as Darth Vader. Yes, it's Hayden Christensen.
 
Three of the four actors who formed the 'Mystery Inc.' crew in the 2002 live action Scooby Doo movie made on Gold Coast had been in the popular series of teen slasher movies in the mid-late 1990s. Freddie Prinze Junior (Fred) was in 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' along with Sarah Michelle Gellar (Daphne) who was also in 'Scream 2', while Matthew Lillard (Shaggy) played Stu in the original 'Scream' movie.

The fourth main cast member, Linda Cardellini who played Velma, was not in any horror movies around this time, but interestingly was in a kids' TV show called 'Bone Chillers' in 1996, which was about four teenagers two male and two female who solve paranormal and regular crime mysteries at their high school and around their community. However Bone Chillers proved to be a critical and commercial failure and was axed and quickly forgotten after just 12 episodes.
 
emuboy said:
The fourth main cast member, Linda Cardellini who played Velma, was not in any horror movies around this time, but interestingly was in a kids' TV show called 'Bone Chillers' in 1996, which was about four teenagers two male and two female who solve paranormal and regular crime mysteries at their high school and around their community. However Bone Chillers proved to be a critical and commercial failure and was axed and quickly forgotten after just 12 episodes.
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She's probably best known for her role in Freaks and Geeks
 

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Movie Film Trivia

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