rawr!

Over here, that’s called “typecasting.” If an actor (male or female) starts out with with a particular role in acting and he/she does well (becomes so popular), then more often than not, they get asked to do very similar roles time and time again until that actor either gets too ‘ugly’ or too old for that mold and finally finds a “way out” by finally getting accepted in a different role. In my opinion, most of your problems with Michael Cera is his being typecast and not so much as his actual abilities.

A good example of this is Zac Efron (although not quite in the same way as he started out as young, very cute, “jealousy-type boyfriend” in the summer series, Summerland) — he was very nearly totally typecast as the “cute, sexy, singing popular high school student” in the three High School Musical movies. Then he was going to be the leading role in the remake of Footloose, again playing to that typecast. But either he refused because of the typecast role or the money, I don’t know. (And I’m glad he refused, not because of him, per se, but because Kevin Bacon did about as good a role as could be done in that movie and I get tired of remakes like that. Also because the original music in it was great and any remake would most probably have garbage music just so that ‘new’ singer could make some $$$. )

But then Zac did another comedy and then he finally emerged as very good leading actor in the new movie Charlie St. Cloud where he plays a super-depressed/slightly mental older brother who lost his younger brother in an auto accident. I thought he did very well in that movie as well as breaking out of that singing high school student mold.