I've noticed that with me, if there's only one thing that an actor or actress has done of note (meaning, one "big" thing as opposed to several "big" things) I tend to call the actor or actress by that name until they go and find themselves a second "big" thing to do as well. Even if I actually know their real names I still find myself doing this.
For example, Christopher Judge is Teal'c, Mary Louise Parker is Nancy Botwin, Tom Welling is Clark, etc. But every so often an actor gets to the point where I actually start calling him or her by their given name when I talk about them. Like earlier this year Michael Shanks stopped being Daniel Jackson because he was also Hawkman on Smallville. When I was a kid Patrick Stewart was just Captain Picard, now he's just Patrick Stewart. (Well. Not just Patrick Stewart. He's pretty freaking epic.) Zachary Quinto isn't simply Sylar any more. The list goes on.
But then there are the actors that are still just their character names. That's fine with me, if it wasn't I wouldn't call actors by those names. Plus that means I don't have to learn as many names as I would otherwise. That's a lot of memory power there.
The only time it's annoying is when I see them in something else that isn't a major thing. At least not in my head.
What brought all this on is the fact that lately I've been going through Criminal Minds on DVD. It was one thing when Meg from Supernatural showed up as a serial killer. That wasn't odd. I mean, it was Meg. But earlier today I was watching an episode and there was Weevil from Veronica Mars. He was playing one of the killers of the episode. Again, not that weird if you know Veronica Mars. Weevil wasn't the best guy ever or anything, but he was a good guy. Just with the "tough guy" front and all that. What threw me off was the fact that here was Weevil playing a killer that was actually seriously shy. My brain had a hard time coping with a shy Weevil.
My brain copes just fine when it's still a similar type of character to what I'm used to thanks to typecasting and everything, like when Dr. Joel Fleischman (Northern Exposure) showed up in The Bucket List as Jack Nicholson's doctor. I was actually pretty happy when Fleischman showed up as the doctor in that, actually. I found it really funny.
Clearly, this post has no real point to it. It's just me rambling on my notebook about stuff that isn't important. But, there it is.
Some people can look at every actor ever and know exactly who they are. Others of us tend to go "Hey, it's that guy!" and then get thrown off when it's someone playing against type. As long as the "type" you're used to thinking of is actually from only one thing.
By the way? While Michael Shanks might not just be Daniel Jackson to me any more, he's still a historian person. Thank you, Smallville, for at least keeping that assumption in tact for me.
Now I am going to go play The Sims 3 or something.
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