Actors Who Secretly Played More Than One Role In A Movie
It takes a lot of work for an actor to convincingly play a character. After all the hustling it typically takes to even land a role, they can look forward to months of studying, memorizing lines, possibly picking up new skills, and of course making sure craft services has all the best snacks. It's remarkable, then, when a star agrees to take on even more work by playing more than one part in a project. Even more remarkable than that? Sometimes, the viewing public isn't even aware that their favorite actors are pulling double duty (or beyond). With that in mind, here's a look at some stars who were somehow able to keep their extra roles and cameos a secret... for awhile, anyway.
Hugh Grant in Cloud Atlas (2012)
Cloud Atlas is a very complicated film based on a very complicated novel by David Mitchell. It takes place across multiple worlds and time streams, and is ultimately about the profound, generation-spanning power of acts of kindness. To hammer that point home, the filmmakers (the Wachowskis, responsible for The Matrix, among other mind-benders) cast the same actors in roles across all those different times and places. Hugh Grant has a total of five roles in the film — everything from an 1840s missionary to a 21st century millionaire to a 24th century Hawaiian tribal ruler. It's in that last role, Kona Chief, that Grant is completely unrecognizable as the guy from Four Weddings and a Funeral, Nine Months, and Two Weeks Notice.
Alain Chanoine in Suicide Squad (2016)
After years of playing bit parts in a slew of TV shows, Canadian actor Alain Chanoine was thrust into stardom with a major role in Suicide Squad. He plays Incubus, one of the nastiest characters in a movie chock full of them, and works alongside Cara Delevingne as Enchantress. He also has a second, unrelated bit part: he's one of Enchantress' Eyes of the Adversary — the citizens turned into violent, goopy monsters. According to Chanoine, different people were in charge of casting different parts of the movie, and he scored in auditions with both groups.
Warwick Davis in the Harry Potter series
Warwick Davis is an icon of science fiction and fantasy films. Apart from his starring role in Willow, he's played four different characters in four different Star Wars movies: Wicket in Return of the Jedi, Weazel and Wald in The Phantom Menace, Wollivan in The Force Awakens, and Weazel again in Solo: A Star Wars Story, not to mention his deleted scene in The Last Jedi. He also had multiple roles in the Star Wars of wizard movies, the Harry Potter franchise. In seven out of the eight movies, Davis appears as Professor Filius Flitwick, professor of Charms and head of Ravenclaw House. His appearance is obscured only a little, with some glasses and a huge mustache. But throughout the series — and unrecognizable under various prosthetics — he put in extra appearances, first as "Goblin Bank Teller" at the Gringotts Wizarding Bank and then as Griphook, an extraordinarily grumpy employee of Gringotts.
Chris Martin in Shaun of the Dead (2004)
There are a number of great cameos in Shaun of the Dead, including Cate Blanchett as a masked doctor as well as cast members from star/co-writer Simon Pegg's British sitcom Spaced. Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin was involved in the movie, too, singing on the soundtrack and appearing in the movie's epilogue as a member of a "help the zombies" charity called ZombAid. But just a few moments earlier, Martin made a very different appearance: he can be easily spotted as one of the zombies in the final attack sequence.
Kevin Peter Hall in Predator (1987)
Kevin Peter Hall might be the most famous actor of the 1980s who was rarely recognized in public. Because he was more than seven feet tall, Hall found work mostly in B-movies as a monster, usually under thick makeup or a costume (one notable albeit short-lived exception: Misfits of Science, the mid-'80s NBC series about a group of superpowered individuals; Hall co-starred as a really tall guy who can shrink). His affinity for the makeup chair brought Hall great fortune: he was Harry in Harry and the Hendersons as well as the titular bloodthirsty alien hunting down future governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura in Predator. The costume and makeup work on the reptilian Predator were so good that few realize the helicopter pilot at the end of the movie was also portrayed by Kevin Peter Hall.
Mark Hamill in The Last Jedi (2017)
Mark Hamill's fans absolutely love the guy, and despite a career that spans hundreds of credits over nearly 40 years, most of that praise and affection comes primarily for two iconic roles: Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies and the voice of the Joker in a number of animated Batman projects. In the former, he's at the center of a timeless story of heroes and villains; in the latter, he brings nuance and depth to what could be a one-note bad guy. Acting in Star Wars and voice work are two very different disciplines, and it turns out that Hamill has combined those two things on more than one occasion.
In addition to portraying a grizzled hermit of a Jedi in 2017's The Last Jedi, Hamill voices a character named Dobbu Scay. That's the little space monster who comes across BB-8 in the Canto Bight casino, thinks it's a slot machine, and drops some coins into the droid. And way back in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, it's Hamill's voice that intones "The first transport is away" when the Empire attacks the Hoth rebel base.
Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2 (2018)
At the end of the second film featuring Ryan Reynolds as the masked Merc with a Mouth, time-traveling villain (or is he?) Cable busts into the mutant prison known as the Ice Box to kill Russell Collins... before he has the chance to grow up and kill Cable's family in the future. In the ensuing chaos, Collins sets free Juggernaut, another mutant and just about the biggest, scariest, and frightening monster in recent movie history.
Juggernaut is such a massive, hulking presence that no human actor could have convincingly portrayed the seemingly indestructible killing machine, so he's a creation of some of the most advanced cinema CGI ever utilized. But his voice was provided by a real guy, and it came courtesy of another actor who's used to acting in superhero action comedies without showing his actual human face: Ryan Reynolds.
Kevin Kline in Wild Wild West (1999)
Wild Wild West isn't the best movie (it won five Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture), but it's a big, silly summer movie, featuring Will Smith at the height of his '90s superstar powers as charming Army Captain Jim West, and the magnificent comic actor Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda, In & Out) as West's partner, marshal Artemus Gordon. But Kenneth Branagh steals the movie as Dr. Arliss Loveless, an over-the-top caricature of a villain and a bitter, former Confederate scientist who takes his post-Civil War revenge by kidnapping American president Ulysses S. Grant and holding him hostage aboard the giant, steampunk robot spider he built. (Like we said, Wild Wild West wasn't going to win any Oscars.)
If the actor who portrays President Grant looks familiar, he should, because he's in most of the rest of the movie. Under some identity-concealing prosthetics and makeup, that's Kevin Kline again. (It's the first time he played a Commander-in-Chief since Dave.)
Robin Williams in Aladdin (1992)
The legendary comedian of course played the Genie in the 1992 Disney movie — as well as all the characters the Genie did impressions of, such as Groucho Marx, Walter Brennan, William F. Buckley, and Carol Channing. Williams stole the movie, and his performance was so dominant it started a conversation about the need for a voiceover performance category at the Academy Awards. But Williams' work was even more masterful than many initially realized, because he secretly played another character entirely. Aladdin begins with a mysterious peddler directly addressing the audience and trying to sell his wares, including a genie's lamp — a part also voiced by Williams. Even more interestingly, the peddler and the Genie are really one and the same. A long-held fan theory, it was confirmed by the film's directors in 2015. In an early version of the script, Aladdin ended with another bookend from the peddler, who then transforms into the Genie before viewers' eyes.
Ted Cassidy on The Addams Family (1964-66)
This one's from a TV show, not a movie, but it's too much fun to leave out. Of all the creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky characters on The Addams Family, actor Ted Cassidy is responsible for two of the most memorable. The 6'9", deep-voiced actor played the Frankenstein's monster-esque butler Lurch on the 1960s sitcom — and he also played Thing, the family's pet disembodied hand who lived in a little box.