An actor died, that's all I knew.

Some name on a page I dd not recognize, so I had just passed the articles about them by. Knew they were famous enough to warrant a major article in the national press, but the name didn't register to me.

So two days later you run into a tweet that is the one that puts it all in to perspective, and that is when you see an art the character they played being mourned: https://twitter.com/pantherapacific/status/461604423077466114/photo/1

And then it hits you, was that the guy the news was talking about? You go back and Google their name and, sure enough, there is there imdb page. You feel a bit stupid at first, and maybe a little bit like a jerk for not knowing their name. However, then you realize as you're going through the list of roles they played WHY you did not know their name.

Because they were very good at their job, maybe even one of the best.

Why?

Well, I saw the art for Hook on "Eddie's" IMDB page and I was like, 'he played a role on that movie?' and sure enough there was Smee. Yes, the guy who played a Eddie from Who Framed Roger Rabbit also played Smee from Hook.

These two roles, just completely incompatible, with no real overlap in archetype were played by the same actor without so much as a hitch. One a somber, yet a bit snarky, detective trying to get over the death of his brother and hatred for the toons that killed him, trying to find the humor within himself again. The other, a bubbly right hand man who supports an over dramatic pirate, while at the same time maintaining the pirate ideal of looking out for one's self when the chips are down.

These two characters are like oil and water, Eddie and Smee are two different characters. And I mean DIFFERENT characters. Heck, even in my memories, Smee was stout and short, never taking the scene when next to Hook. Eddie stood taller, perhaps because Roger was shorter, but also because his character just seemed 'taller'. The actor was of course, the same size, but he played the diverse roles so well that they were completely different people that until today.

Let's compare this to the actors I'm more likely to know the names of:

George Clooney: Probably playing a charismatic and charming fellow.
Johnny Depp: Probably some eccentric and lanky character.
Charley Sheen: Probably playing a partying playboy of some kind.
Jeff Goldblum: Well... Jeff Goldblum

You see where I'm going with this? If I know an actor or actress's name it's because that name has become synonymous with a character archetype. If that's the case, is there a reason this actor only seems to play those roles? Is it because they are merely acting the parts that they are comfortable with? In other words is it part of their IRL character to begin with?

So it may have seemed insulting as an actor for me to go "Who?" when I hear their IRL name. Perhaps though, it is not, it is a mark that perhaps they were a bit too good at acting, because I see them through the characters they played and I never ever suspected they were played by the same man.